After a very peaceful night, we made an early start. We followed a Canaltime, Angel's Payment (all Canaltimes have seriously weird names), up the first two locks, 11 and 10. They were novices, but very willing to learn, and got so worried about holding us up that they insisted we pass them above 10 ("loosed us by" in the canal jargon). This just goes to show that a friendly approach to beginners on the system often pays dividends. Lots of habitual canal users curse the likes of Canaltime, but in our experience, many privateers who only leave their marina once or twice a year are just as badly behaved and as unskilled as novice hirers, and often more arrogant - after all, they are boat owners, not mere hirers.
As usual, we moored above Lock 6 to use the Co-op supermarket nearby. We set off again by 11 and went on to the water point at the top. Here we found an example of the mystery of BW's approach to self pump out. Officially, you can pump out at sanitary stations which are on the mains, but not at ones which use a septic tank. However, we know of several examples which don't fit this rule, and the station at Atherstone Top is one, as the photo shows. What could be behind this particular prohibition? The fact that Tony Wright MBE, the lockkeeper, takes great pride in the appearance of his flight, perhaps?
By the time we'd watered it was gone 12, so we lunched on the way, with the rain getting steadily heavier. By one o'clock we'd reached Hartshill and moored on the first available spot. There followed a quiet afternoon, in continuing rain. We lit the fire, and I spent some time on the net, doing a blog and browsing around. The connection became very slow and erratic at 4, presumably because the return of the local teenagers from school and college had increased the demand on the system.
Monday 14 May
We woke early to the sound of yet more rain. Confirming my suspicion of the day before, the internet connection was now working fine. As I was working at the desk, I saw a boat side sliding by with an elegant piece of scroll work on the side. "Looks like an Andy Russell paint job", thought I (Andy paints all the Braidbar boats) and sure enough, it proved to be Bessie Surtees, Braidbar number 92.
Our main task of the day was a trip to Dobbies Garden Centre, which is about 10 minutes walk from the Hartshill mooring. It's one of those places which is much more than just a place that sells plants and spades. It has a farm shop, a branch of Julian Graves, and an up market country clothing store, as well as all sorts of other stuff in the main store. In fact, we did most of our Christmas shopping there last year.
This time, we bought some supplies from the farm shop, including some wicked sounding garlic relish (17% garlic), a container to grow plants in on the roof, so that the boat will look pretty at the St Ives National in August, and a load of dried fruit and muesli ingredients from Julian Graves. Then we lugged it all back to the boat, which strangely was now more like 20 minutes walk away.
After lunch, it was back on the net while it was still reasonably quick. I added a Google search box to the blog site, and researched the T-mobile internet deal. I think I've said previously that I currently use the Orange PAYG one pound a day feature, but it's only a GPRS connection, so you have to be pretty patient at times. T-Mobile offer a fast G3 connection via a USB modem for GBP29 per month. As long as the modem can be persuaded to work with my Macintosh iBook, it would be a better deal.
In the end, I emailed Ross Barkham via his Taniwah site - Ross is a guru for those of us connecting to the net with Macs. I also took time to improve the home page and sidebar of my main site, and then at 4.15, sure enough everything slowed down again and I knocked off.
We had a quiet night (apart from the delightful clock on the Hartshill Maintenance Yard building striking the hour), except that at 4.30 am, a boat motored past. Some people are just too keen for our good.
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