Twenty locks in two good days

6th & 7th May

We've had a couple of relaxed starts in the last two days, partly down to the knowledge that we had 10 broad locks to do each day. This may seem counter-intuitive, but unless you've prearranged a locking partner, it's a good idea to hang about below the first lock for a while to see if anyone turns up, and there's no point doing that much before nine.

Yesterday, this didn't work, admittedly, but it did give us a chance to have another look for the geocache we'd failed to find the day before. In fact, that didn't work, either, but you can't have everything. I mean, it wasn't actually raining, and although breezy, the wind wasn't by any means impossible.

Indeed, we then had a good morning's boating, chugging gently up the locks, holding Sanity against the side with a centreline around the middle bollard (no dispute about their utility in broad locks), opening just the one paddle on the same side as the boat and so onwards and upwards.

(For those not familiar with British wide canals, if you are alone going up a broad lock with a narrow boat, there's another piece of counter intuitiveness to be aware of. If you draw the same side paddle, the incoming water flows under the boat, bounces off the opposite lock wall, and holds the boat steady against the nearside wall. At least it does in the locks between Napton and Birmingham, and in a random selection of the other broad locks around the system. For the rest, you're on your own, and anything can happen.

This is particularly true of the locks between Barbridge and Chester, each of which has its own little peculiarities in this regard.)

We stopped just before lunchtime on the embankment before Long Itchington and the Two Boats pub. It's a good place to moor, except that there are no rings, just a nice clean concrete edge and a refurbished towpath. The towpath is so solid, belting a big, 30" x 1" diameter mooring pin (ex marquee peg type) with the lump hammer as hard as we could, many, many times, just about drove it in far enough to give some hope of security.

After lunch, we took a wander round Long Itchington, partly in search of a shop to buy bread for today, and partly just to rubber neck a stunningly attractive village. We may have taken the wrong roads, and a check of the First Mate Guide before leaving Sanity would have been prudent, but shops were hard to find. In the end, I asked the Garmin for advice, and it directed us to a little shop not far from Itchington Bottom Lock, where we were able to get what we wanted. They even had a copy of the Independent, both yesterday and today.

Back at the boat, we had a quiet afternoon and evening in this idyllic spot.

Lurking below the lock paid off today. Not only did we find a cache nearby, but a boat then turned up. Helmsman shared up all ten locks to Stockton Top with us, making the locking more straightforward, though we probably didn't gain a huge amount in time. What we gained in having two lockwheelers we lost in having to manoeuvre two boats into each lock.

Nonetheless, it's still worth doing. We've had a dry Spring, and the long range forecast for the Summer is warm and dry, so water conservation is already a wise precaution.

By 11 we were at Stockton Top, with loads of memories for us of our OwnerShips days, especially as it's a Thursday, when the boats come back to get sorted out ready for handover on Friday.

After lunch, we looked up a series of three caches hidden on the flight. Called the Top Shop series, they are puzzle caches, in that in order to get their co-ordinates, you have to walk down the flight noting a variety of numbers, and then plug them into formulae to get the co-ords for the first two caches.

Each of those contains a formula for one of the co-ords of the third cache. If it all sounds a bit complicated, it is, but it appeals to some folks, and is a way of making the game more interesting when the navigation aspect is bound to be a bit straightforward on a towpath.

We managed to find all three, so a distinct sense of achievement.

The rest of the afternoon has been quiet again. We plan to have a meal in the pub here, the Boat, for old times sake. Tomorrow we aim to toddle on to Napton, coming back to the top of Calcutt for Sunday, when we'll hopefully rendezvous with John and Nev on Waimaru.