Leamington Spa to Cape Visitor Moorings
3 miles, 2 locks
Having been buffeted about quite a bit of the night we decided to double check the forecast for the next few days. Our original plan was to have today off and to explore a bit of Leamington Spa, then move on to Cape moorings tomorrow and tackle the 21 Hatton Locks on Sunday. We even had a friend lined up who had volunteered to help.
However, having checked the forecast and found that Saturday is likely to be dry and not too windy, whereas Sunday is going to be very wet with gusts up to 50kph, we decided to push on today and do Hatton tomorrow. There are quite a number of boats around, so hopefully we will be able to share the journey. We are sorry we won't see John, but will arrange to meet up with him and Helen once we are safely back home. Please feel free to volunteer next time we come this way!!
So off we went, through bridge 41 where there is this mural on the non towpath side - I am not sure why the grim reaper?? From then on it so exceptionally slow going!
The sun was shining as we prepared to leave, so why was the journey so slow?
A boat had passed us shortly before we left, but we caught it up in no time at all - they were going so slowly we were in tick over and even then, Chris had to reverse every now and then to stop hitting them! At one point she did wave to us to pass, but she kept to the centre line of the canal and there really was nowhere safe to make such a manoeuvre, so we just plodded along behind. Eventually she did pull over and we went past. This was just a couple of hundred yards or so before we were going to stop Tesco. It took us 35 minutes to travel 1 mile! We have to hope we will not be going all the way up Hatton behind them.
then the River Avon
The burning question when you approach Tesco is 'will there be a mooring'? There was - more space than we have ever seen before. Tesco's raided, we continued on to the two Cape locks. There was a boat filling with water and so we were able to share the locks with them. For the first time for a while we are going
The dogs and I walked the three quarters of a mile to Hatton bottom lock. We have rubbish for the bin that we thought was in the car park opposite lock one. I put the dogs in a 'sit stay'
and went to investigate. There is nothing in sight, so maybe it is further up - we will find out tomorrow. The good news was that there are four boats moored below the flight, but three are not going until Sunday and the fourth is not the boat we were stuck behind this morning.
It is a lot quieter tonight, so it will be an early night and hopefully a fairly early start in the morning to make our way up the Hatton flight to then find somewhere safe to moor to sit out 'Bronagh' on Sunday.
2 comments:
Think you've got your tops and bottoms mixed up along with ups and downs.
Hope you didn't get too wet today. It was dry before we opened the door this morning and then has rained ever since. The forecast for tomorrow seems to be getting better, I'd planned all sorts to do inside but I think we'll be heading up Napton instead.
Ooops,thank you Pip. My proof reader also missed it! Mind having done Hatton in the rain nothing would surprise me. I hope you have a better day tomorrow than you had today.
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