Warwick here we Come

23 locks, and 5 miles, Now moored at Kate Boats on the Grand Union Canal

Well Tuesday dawned cold and overcast but no precipitation. What a relief. The Hatton flight of Locks dropping a total of one hundred and fifty feet in two miles sure presented a challenge. The paddles at the top and bottom of the chambers are the same as the Knowle flight encountered a couple of weeks ago. The gates are very heavy and although I normally do the locks while Derek is at the tiller I was not relishing doing the flight alone. As in the Knowle flight we changed places and I took over the helm, much easier. Arriving at the top lock with a hire boat behind us we opened the gates for them and they decided they wanted water at the waterpoint albeit with a very soggy towpath. We decided to proceed alone. Once through the first lock with the daunting task ahead I spotted a boat coming down the top lock behind us, Hooray. We will wait for them to catch us up. A pleasant surprise when we found it was Phil and Pat on Nb Hyperion who we had met briefly at Lonsonford, this is their home territory and experts on the area. Together we shared the flight and the two remaining locks into Warwick.

Pulling into Kate Boats we were hoping to find an engineer who could get our heating sorted. No luck so Derek opted to take the unit out and send it away to Southampton for its annual service. Unfortunately our timing was not good and we may not get it back for 3 weeks or so. We have taken a mooring here with power moored alongside Nb Hyperion so that we can run the small electric fan heater during this bout of cold weather.

Looking back up the Hatton Flight of locks

We have also managed to find a glazier to get new glass cut for our broken porthole and replace the other cracked one. We will take a look at the castle here over the weekend whilst we have half price tickets after visiting Blenheim Palace in the summer whilst we were stuck at Oxford and these expire on Monday. There are special events this week due to peak times around Easter.

I have an appointment for a haircut tomorrow morning and Derek will pick up a couple of sets of drawers we spotted yesterday for our newly sorted saloon. "Anyone looking for an Argos mdf set of drawers going free", its such a shame to throw them away although they are rubbish compared to the good quality timber that we are going for this time.

We will make a decision after the weekend as to whether we carry on towards Braunston or wait here for our heating unit to be returned. At least the temperatures are meant to be improving.

1028 locks, 1345½ miles, 40 Tunnels, 41 swing bridges and 19 lift bridges since Nov 2006