and so to Wootton Wawen

Whilst staying with Elanor, she and I watched her DVD of the A Team film, and like Hannibal Smith, I just love it when a plan comes together. Admittedly, mine don't involve high explosive or psychotic chopper pilots, but it's still good.

We loafed about at Wilmcote (actually, we cleaned mud off the roof and stuff) then set off at around nine, Sheila pottering along a rather shallow canal. A nice lady waited for us at Bearley/Odd Lock, as she saw us coming over the aqueduct and the lock was empty. In practice, she'd have had time to turn the lock and get down it before we got there; I was steering for that bit (Sheila and heights, no, no) and Sanity Again crawled across at just on 1 mph.

There was plenty of room at Wootton, where we had a coffee and then a stroll into the village to buy a paper. That shop is well worth exploring; it's one of your genuine Aladdin's cave variety. We couldn't resist the farm shop on the way back, nor the "Free Range Pork Pie" on sale. I commented on the quaint concept, and the guy serving said that it was really sad when they cut their little legs off. At least one of us is barmy; I should have asked him if he flew helicopters...

This afternoon we unloaded everything from the lower bow locker, repacked it all and included the broken folding chairs, whence they will be extracted when we get to Kings Bromley and can take them back to where we bought them.

Some pictures from the aqueduct (Sheila, look away now):

The start of the beast

Those are very tall trees...

This bloke stopped to take a photo of the boat, so I returned the favour

Not much between the boat and the railway

Tomorrow, onwards and upwards.

Not all good, then, but pretty good...

Last night at Lowsonford (sounds like an arty film) there was very little Vodafone signal, and nothing at all of either 3 or O₂, thus no blog. I was able to tether the mobile to the Mac via Bluetooth and get email and stuff, but blogging would have been a step too far.

Also, we met Adam and Adrian, who have not long bought Briar Rose, Braidbar number 76. They invited us in for a celebratory glass of wine in the late afternoon, and it turned into a very pleasant evening. Adam cooked chilli, which he served with home baked bread rolls (scrummy), and we sat, gossiped and swapped scandal until quite late.

During the day, we'd had a very pleasant run to Kingswood Junction, then down ten locks to Lowsonford. I took some photos on the way:

Lets just tie on the lock landing, why not?

Stratford Lock cottage

Steerer's eye view of a Stratford Lock

The visitor mooring at Lowsonford is quite limited, so turning up in good time is wise. Adam and Adrian ended up locking down and finding an unused long term mooring almost at the next lock.

This morning, we did another nine locks, ending up at Wooton Wawen. There's a substantial farm shop complex here, but don't let it stop you from visiting the equally useful village shop. On the way, we passed Braidbar 70, Phoebe, going the other way, the second time this year, the last being on the way up to Crick; it just shows how we get about.

Here at Wooton Wawen, we found The Briar Rose, crewed by Geoff and Helen, fellow workers at the IWA Festival. Adam and Adrian caught up in due course, so we had the two Roses in view.

The bad news is that at lock 36 my nice new PMR radio somehow slipped off its temporary lanyard and fell into the lock. We fished about with the Sea Searcher magnet for a bit, as testing the other one showed that it would just grip the radio, but it was really  a case of satisfying ourselves that we'd done all we could.

We're so pleased with them, I've ordered another pair, so we'll end up with three altogether. But this time, proper lanyards will be made before we deploy them...