Saturday 4 April 2009

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

2 comments:

Tom and Jan said...

Hello Derek

I sent an email to your website email address earlier in the week but am now not sure if it was transmitted correctly.

Could you let me know if it didn't arrive it and I'll re-send it

Regards

Tom
Adelaide

Derek and Dot said...

Hi Tom
Yes received and trying to catch up on emails in the next day or so.
Regards Derek