Got it this time.

0 Locks 3 miles and 1 tunnel,Now moored north of bridge 44.
Total of 221 locks and 241¹/₂ miles and 9 Tunnels since 5th Nov 2006

It was another early start to do a route march across town to the Hospital of St Cross. It was hard on the system as we had both had to fast since last night before having blood tests this morning. By 9.30am a bacon n egg Mc Muffin and coffee was looking good even though I’m not a big Macdonalds fan.
On the way back we called into Tesco’s to see if they had any BOGOF specials worth picking up. Well we have to stretch the budget as far as it will go and don’t mind relieving a big conglomerate of some of their excess profit. Better off in my pocket than theirs.

After all this, a change of scenery was called for so we pulled pins and headed north. We stopped at the Barley Mow pub at Newbold on Avon for a drink and watered up at the same time. While maneuvering the boat a familiar face came through the Newbold tunnel in the form of Dave on n/b Gwyniad who we last saw a month or so ago back at Blisworth.

We had a quick chat but he was off to the dentist in Rugby as he had broken a tooth.
As we passed the boatyard of T F Yates at Newbold on Avon I spotted an outdoor model railway track in the garden of the house next door. The way the track was built I suspect that it may be used for real steam model locos. Pity I haven’t got time to investigate this further. We have now moved further north to just north of bridge 44. There are a lot of bridges missing around here, mainly old railway bridges long since been demolished.
We found the local duck family of mum and 9 ducklings and gave them a feed of bread.

While I was standing on the rear deck something caught my eye, I spotted something moving in the water which turned to be a Grass Snake swimming across the canal. He was a beautiful specimen of about 2 feet in length. Dot was frightened that he might get on the boat as he was swimming straight towards us but he just disappeared into the reed bed.
Today has been another glorious day and the weather girl on TV last night said that it has been the driest April since records began and the month is not yet over.

I had just finished writing the blog or so I thought and went up onto the rear deck to stretch my legs when I heard a low flying plane. I turned around to see the Halifax flying past slow and low. I shot into the boat to grab my camera and managed to get just 1 successful picture of this WWII vintage aircraft. What a great finale for the day.

Halifax a WWII vintage aircraft