A couple of good days' boating in fine weather

12th & 13th April

We made a very relaxed start yesterday, after a rather broken night. The weather was fine, and lots of boats about, it being Easter. Approaching Amington, we were on the look out for firewood in the cut, but the piece Sheila found was over the top even by our standards.

It consisted of a couple of 2 metre lengths of 6" x 6" timber (yes, I know, mixing units again), held together by short lengths of decking timber, as if it had been some sort of gangway.

It was far too heavy to get onto the boat, so we manoeuvred across to the towpath, hauled it out and shoved it down the bank on the other side.

We had to queue briefly at Glascote, mainly because the boat in the bottom lock had had the bad luck to get a right blade full, and had to be bow hauled out. We followed another boat down the top lock, then waited for a Wyvern Shipping hire boat to come up before working down the bottom one.

They told Sheila they were doing the Warwick Ring, which means some serious boating if you are starting from Leighton Buzzard. Sheila gathered that they are planning to become liveaboard continuous cruisers next year, so we hope to see them at Crick Show at the end of May.

I managed the turn from the Coventry into the Birmingham and Fazeley at Fazeley without too much hassle for once, though it's a junction that seems to present problems no matter which way you approach it.

We stopped outside Fazeley Mill Marina to top up with water, and spoke briefly to Corinne again as she came out to show some folk around the other side of the marina. Then we did the short chug to the Drayton Footbridge, that monument to Errol Flynn's Hollywood, with two castellated towers leading to a high level bridge.

We let Elanor know where we were, then went out and found the three geocaches in the Drayton Series that we'd not found last time we looked for them.

Back at the boat, there was time for a quick cup of tea before I set to and did the 6600 hours oil and filter change. We seemed to have picked up some more water in the stern bilge, so I tweaked up the stern gland a tad. It's hard to know whether we are getting water in through the gland, or whether some of the boating in torrential rain we've done lately has resulted in it draining into that bilge.

Sheila spent a bit of time on the net, identifying caches in the Windermere area, so that we've got some to look for whilst on our hols up there.

Elanor joined us for dinner and the night. She's acquired a new car, a more recent version of her Honda Civic, this one being a three door, black, type S, very sexy.

Today, she showed it off by giving me a lift to Sainsbury's, then headed off home. We chugged gently along to a towpath mooring not far from the foot of Curdworth flight by Kingsbury Water Park, one of our favourite spots. I checked the stern gland, which after 30 minutes boating hadn't let in any water, and was just gently warm to the touch, implying that it's set about right.

The weather continued glorious, and we filled in time before lunch by strolling up to the bottom lock. Anon was moored there, selling his leather belts and stuff. I bought one from him, at a very reasonable tenner, and Sheila ordered a version of his handcuff key holder in black.

He'd only got brown ones in stock, but said not to worry, he'd have one made by the end of the afternoon.

After lunch, we set off to find another set of caches, hidden up the flight. We managed three out of six. Two of the ones we didn't find were hard to look for, as the towpath was very busy with sauntering muggles, fishing muggles, boating muggles, biking muggles, in fact muggles of all descriptions.

The final failure was more frustrating. We were well up the flight by then, very sure we were in the right place, and had loads of time to look, quite uninterrupted. Nonetheless, we just couldn't spot it. Either it's gone (seems unlikely as someone found it yesterday) or we were missing something about it.

We'll have another go for it tomorrow, as we boat up the flight. On our way back to the boat, we stopped at Anon, only to be told that he'd been down to Sanity and left Sheila's key holder hanging amongst the socks we'd left out drying on the line under the top plank in the cratch.

Sheila also bought a belt from him, with a slightly fancier buckle than mine, so it was eleven quid rather than ten. The key holder was £3.50, so he's much better value than some other leather goods merchants you see round the cut.

Tomorrow, we'll work up the flight and stop at the top, then make a crack of dawn start on Wednesday to get through the iffy bits of the BCN in one go.