4th & 5th May
After a solid night's sleep (so that's the answer to insomnia, do more than 20 locks in a day...) we woke to a cool and cloudy morning, with light showers drifting through from time to time.
At eight, the Black Prince hire boat that had been tied behind us set off towards Hatton. We made a more leisurely start, leaving the boat at around half eight to explore Warwick. Despite often coming here to hire boats from Kate Boats in the eighties, we'd never actually been into the town centre.
We found the Castle after about 15 minutes gentle walk from Bridge 50. They were preparing for a Bank Holiday extravaganza, so we didn't go in, but maybe next time we will. Then we had a wander round the town itself, which was, as may be expected, very quiet.
On the way back to the boat, we called in at Sainsbury's and bought just enough stuff to keep us going for the day. By the time we were back on board, it had decided to rain in earnest, so we had a good excuse for a recovery day, loafing about reading the papers, catching up with emails and generally chilling.
Well, it was a Bank Holiday.
This morning we had another relaxed start. We worked down the Cape Two, and filled up at the water point at the bottom. Then we plodded on to Kate Boats in search of diesel and a gas bottle.
As I've said, we used to hire from Kate regularly, when it was being run by Eric Simmonds, a decent man and with a great sense of what we'd now call customer relations. Sadly, things aren't so good now.
They insisted on charging us a 60% propulsion split, in direct contravention of the relevant Revenue and Excise brief. I wouldn't sign the declaration as it stood (it was pre-printed) but crossed out the 60% and inserted 30%, this being my estimate for the next tankful. In the circumstances, I only took 50 litres off them, so they could have sold me around 60 litres more if they'd been playing the game.
I also asked for a full VAT receipt, but was only given the till roll receipt stapled to a compliments slip. Just to round things off, they would only take cash or a cheque from me, although there was a chip and pin card reader in plain view on the counter. Maybe they've lost their merchant status with their card company...
Muttering gently to ourselves, we boated along to the Tesco moorings at Emscote, where we were joined by Kyle and Sabrina. We all walked down to the store, though Brian and John had finished long before we did. In fact, I had to go and get a second trolley to take the overflow of goodies.
The great thing about this store is that you can take the trolley right up to the boat to offload it, so we've been able to replace all the stores we'd run down before leaving the boat, and start building up stocks for catering and drinking at the Crick Show at the end of the month.
After lunching on board, we pottered along to a mooring near Radford Semele village, just short of Radford Bottom lock, the start of the climb up to Napton. It's a very pleasant mooring, just clear of the twin conurbations of Leamington and Warwick, and deservedly popular.
To complete the day's exercise, we walked on to the lock, and had a look for a geocache nearby. We didn't find it, partly because we'd forgotten to take gloves with us, and the nettles are now quite ferocious when hunting for the cache, and partly because it's clearly very cleverly hidden.
We'll have another look for it tomorrow after we go up the lock. On the way back, we noted that Indigo Dream is safe and sound on her towpath mooring – Radford's obviously a better place to tie than Banbury!
Back at the boat, we had a cup of tea, and I sent an email to HM Revenue and Customs, explaining what happened this morning, and asking if there's any way I can recover the overpaid duty on my diesel.
Showing posts with label Warwick. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Warwick. Show all posts
Tuesday, 5 May 2009
Sunday, 3 May 2009
More good travelling
2nd & 3rd May
After a great night's sleep on Friday night (and no wonder) we had a great start to the boating day on Saturday. We chugged merrily along to the top of Knowle Locks, through blissfully rural canal, in warm Spring sunshine. Despite the claims of Carole Sampson in the First Mate Guide, we found no real mooring at the top of the locks, just some bollards for the lock landing and water point.
This was a bit of a blow, as we'd planned to get some bread and milk from the shops. We needed to water and to run the washing machine, but with the shops about 10 to 15 minutes walk away, it wasn't practical to visit them in the time taken to fill the water tank.
Having filled up we set off down the locks. I'd heard that they had a reputation for being heavy, despite the fact that the lock gear is the same as that on Hatton, which can be a bit hard, but by no means impossible. It may be that the Knowle flight is not so well maintained or something, but they were indeed hard work.
In addition, the design of the side ponds means that the lockwheeler has a long trek between each lock and the next. This led to me failing to get lock 3 open before letting Sheila on Sanity out of 2. It looked full, and indeed the top gates were swinging when I first saw them, but having emptied 2 into the pond between, I needed to lift a paddle to get the gate open again.
Whilst doing this, Sanity decided to do a little waltz in the wide pound, and finally jammed herself across it, sideways on to the gate. A serious bit of revving and hauling on the bow line eventually persuaded her into the lock, but after that, Sheila refused to leave one lock before the next was open.
The only other moment of note was much more fun: a rook came wandering round and perched on the balance beams as we locked down. Sheila saw it wait until the lock was almost empty, when it hopped down onto the cill and hoovered up the minnows trapped there.
Fish rescue the corvid way.
At Lapworth we tied just before the junction and I popped into the handy shop there, getting a loaf of bread, some pasties and some milk. We ate lunch straight away, then boated on to the top of Hatton. There's not much visitor mooring in the cutting, but some of the long term mooring was clearly not occupied, so we borrowed one of those for the night.
Elanor was able to join us for the evening, parking on the little bit of car park behind the Top Lock cafe. She brought us some decent meat from the Barton Turn butcher, so we had boned and rolled shoulder of lamb last night, with an onion and mint sauce, mashed spud and summer cabbage.
This morning I gave her a hair a clip (eight on top and six on the sides) and she went off at half nine to get a riding lesson. We had moved to the top of the flight at nine, but after waiting half an hour, there was no sign of another boat turning up to share down with us so off we went down the 21.
This turned into another good morning's boating. There were lots of gongoozlers about, of course, it being a Bank Holiday Sunday, but they were in cheerful mood, and gave us someone to chat to as we went down the 21.
As usual we alternated lockwheeling and steering in blocks of five. My right shoulder had informed me during the night that it was not best pleased with the work it had been expected to do down Knowle, so we got out the long throw windlass for Hatton.
This made a lot of difference, and I'm feeling the benefit now. We emerged from the bottom lock at 12.40, so three hours ten for the flight, not a record breaking time, but not bad for the two of us and one boat. We had a fair number of the locks with us, to be honest, there being steady traffic up the flight all morning.
We went straight on to the Cape, tying on the visitor mooring above the Cape Two. Shortly after we'd done so, Brian Jarrett came by on Kyle, and I was able to present him with two cans of used engine oil to fuel his Russell Newbery.
After lunch we went in search of a micro cache somewhere near Kate Boats, but couldn't find it, partly because the nettles were all over the likely site, partly because there were wandering muggles everywhere, and possibly because, as I realised when we got back to the boat, I'd not switched the Garmin back to the standard datum from the British OS one I was using in the Lakes.
Tomorrow we plan to take a day off from boating, staying on this mooring and going in to Warwick, then the day after we'll boat through Leamington Spa and tie at Radford Semele, ready to start the slog up the other side of the valley.
After a great night's sleep on Friday night (and no wonder) we had a great start to the boating day on Saturday. We chugged merrily along to the top of Knowle Locks, through blissfully rural canal, in warm Spring sunshine. Despite the claims of Carole Sampson in the First Mate Guide, we found no real mooring at the top of the locks, just some bollards for the lock landing and water point.
This was a bit of a blow, as we'd planned to get some bread and milk from the shops. We needed to water and to run the washing machine, but with the shops about 10 to 15 minutes walk away, it wasn't practical to visit them in the time taken to fill the water tank.
Having filled up we set off down the locks. I'd heard that they had a reputation for being heavy, despite the fact that the lock gear is the same as that on Hatton, which can be a bit hard, but by no means impossible. It may be that the Knowle flight is not so well maintained or something, but they were indeed hard work.
In addition, the design of the side ponds means that the lockwheeler has a long trek between each lock and the next. This led to me failing to get lock 3 open before letting Sheila on Sanity out of 2. It looked full, and indeed the top gates were swinging when I first saw them, but having emptied 2 into the pond between, I needed to lift a paddle to get the gate open again.
Whilst doing this, Sanity decided to do a little waltz in the wide pound, and finally jammed herself across it, sideways on to the gate. A serious bit of revving and hauling on the bow line eventually persuaded her into the lock, but after that, Sheila refused to leave one lock before the next was open.
The only other moment of note was much more fun: a rook came wandering round and perched on the balance beams as we locked down. Sheila saw it wait until the lock was almost empty, when it hopped down onto the cill and hoovered up the minnows trapped there.
Fish rescue the corvid way.
At Lapworth we tied just before the junction and I popped into the handy shop there, getting a loaf of bread, some pasties and some milk. We ate lunch straight away, then boated on to the top of Hatton. There's not much visitor mooring in the cutting, but some of the long term mooring was clearly not occupied, so we borrowed one of those for the night.
Elanor was able to join us for the evening, parking on the little bit of car park behind the Top Lock cafe. She brought us some decent meat from the Barton Turn butcher, so we had boned and rolled shoulder of lamb last night, with an onion and mint sauce, mashed spud and summer cabbage.
This morning I gave her a hair a clip (eight on top and six on the sides) and she went off at half nine to get a riding lesson. We had moved to the top of the flight at nine, but after waiting half an hour, there was no sign of another boat turning up to share down with us so off we went down the 21.
This turned into another good morning's boating. There were lots of gongoozlers about, of course, it being a Bank Holiday Sunday, but they were in cheerful mood, and gave us someone to chat to as we went down the 21.
As usual we alternated lockwheeling and steering in blocks of five. My right shoulder had informed me during the night that it was not best pleased with the work it had been expected to do down Knowle, so we got out the long throw windlass for Hatton.
This made a lot of difference, and I'm feeling the benefit now. We emerged from the bottom lock at 12.40, so three hours ten for the flight, not a record breaking time, but not bad for the two of us and one boat. We had a fair number of the locks with us, to be honest, there being steady traffic up the flight all morning.
We went straight on to the Cape, tying on the visitor mooring above the Cape Two. Shortly after we'd done so, Brian Jarrett came by on Kyle, and I was able to present him with two cans of used engine oil to fuel his Russell Newbery.
After lunch we went in search of a micro cache somewhere near Kate Boats, but couldn't find it, partly because the nettles were all over the likely site, partly because there were wandering muggles everywhere, and possibly because, as I realised when we got back to the boat, I'd not switched the Garmin back to the standard datum from the British OS one I was using in the Lakes.
Tomorrow we plan to take a day off from boating, staying on this mooring and going in to Warwick, then the day after we'll boat through Leamington Spa and tie at Radford Semele, ready to start the slog up the other side of the valley.
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