3 locks and 10 miles. Now moored at Brownsover Park, Rugby
As we wanted to make the most of the good weather while it last's we made a slightly earlier than usual start, firstly by moving up to the water point by the BW office.
Once we got underway the weather improved with even the sun making an appearance for a while. It felt really good to be on the move again. Other boaters had similar ideas as we followed 1 boat all the way to Hillmorton and passed 3 heading south. We noted that bridge 80 is still awaiting repair and another bridge just further north is now in need of repair and has a bright orange buoy floating under the arch.
Bridge 80, see our earlier post here and compare, is there any difference?
Bridge 78 also has a problem, although smaller, both are on Public Footpaths!
At Hillmorton locks we arrived just as a solo boater was setting the left lock, the right hand one was also set against us so Dot set off to fill it. In the meantime the solo boater had wandered off leaving his boat to float away with the wind. I secured our boat and grabbed his centre rope which was just lying on the ground and just about ready to fall into the canal by this time. As he opened the lock gate I started to pull his boat into the lock until he could take control again. All the way through the 3 locks we helped this guy by opening or shutting paddles or gates for him and did we get a thank you, not on your nellie. We don't mind helping people but a courteous thank you would be nice.
As we had done a load of washing on the way up here we stopped at the Hillmorton water point to top up again before continuing on to Rugby. Along the way we spotted a Kestrel hovering over the hedgerow. It aborted it's first attempt to catch lunch but a couple of minutes later we spotted it again right above the towpath. We watched it as it gradually dropped in altitude and then all of a sudden it did a headlong dive into the hedgerow undergrowth. After a few moments and some wing flapping the Kestrel took off with his lunch, a mouse or vole, firmly grasped in his talons. Its sight's like this that makes cruising through the countryside all worth while. You would very lucky to see something like this in the city.
Arriving at Brownsover Park we hardly recognised the place as all the willow tree's have had a very severe pruning and on the opposite bank the earth works that are going on in the dis-used industrial site have produced a huge mound of base coarse obliterating any view of the city. They started work on this site at the end of last summer and are still only doing the earth works so it must be a very big project. We will investigate when we go to Tesco's tomorrow.
893 locks, 1210 ½ miles, 35 Tunnels, 40 swing bridges and 19 lift bridges since Nov 2006
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