Break Out the Windlass’s.

9 Locks, 1½ Miles. Now moored near bridge 47.

We're back to locking after the winter break.

The day started with a couple of shopping errands, Dot into town and me just up past the coal yard where there is a small car accessory shop where I was hoping to get some filters for the engine. I finished up with only the oil filter but I did get some cross reference numbers for future reference.

It was mid-morning before we eventually got under way and of course we had some locks ahead of us. For the last 4 months we have only had to contend with the stop lock at Hawkesbury junction which only has a drop of a foot so it was time to break out the windlass for some serious lock work.

We encountered a few boats today and a BW work boat that was on its way to Hartshill. We got into discussion with one of the BW guys and mentioned the 2 couch’s in the canal at bridge 30 and Nuneaton. He was aware of them but they had not got around to retrieving them from the water yet.

At lock 7 I spotted a Buzzard slowly circling around on the breeze and stood watching it for a while. It wasn’t until I had been observing it for about 10 minutes when I realised he wasn’t alone, in fact it turned out that there were 5 of them. They were a beautiful sight all circling around at different altitudes within a small area occasionally all coming together so that a good camera would have been able to snap them in one picture. All this against a clear blue sky, fantastic.

By the time we got moored up the temperature had climbed to somewhere around 15deg and what a glorious afternoon it is.

1597 locks, 3391½ miles, 59 Tunnels, 44 swing bridges and 39 lift bridges since Nov 2006