We have had another lovely stay in the Saltisford Canal Centre in Warwick and got a few things done. Such as – several loads of washing and drying, replacement of some blacking, Ken has fiddled with the light fittings and we have been to Sainsbury’s 8 times!
I have also cleaned the boat – twice! Why have I cleaned it twice? Well, I did it as soon as we got to Saltisford so I could do the touching up the next day. However after a week moored under a beech tree there was a lot of leaves, twigs, bird poo and sticky deposits from blossom all over it so I had to do it again!
Anyway, we have now resumed our travels with a 2.5 mile and 21 lock trip to the top of the Hatton flight. This took 3.5 hours which I was pretty pleased with as we did the whole flight on our own, following a pair of hire boats. There were only a few locks where someone was coming down or had just come down so most of the locks were against us.
Last time we did this flight we shared with another boat and we had a lady in front getting every lock ready and we only did it half an hour faster. Indeed, this time the pair of boats following us had 5 crew on the bank and they didn’t catch us up!
We moored as soon as we could after doing the locks and headed for the Hatton Arms of course! This is a large country pub, very popular with diners. Unfortunately it is up a rather steep hill. Well, it felt pretty steep after all those locks! Then when you get there you have to climb a load of stairs up to the terrace. The view is nice though as was the beer!
This evening the boat that was following us has returned from where ever they went after finishing the locks and has moored in front of us ready to go back down the locks – tomorrow! Aaargh, they must be mad.
Mind you I should talk I have got 19 locks of the Lapworth flight to do tomorrow and a further 31 locks of the Tardebigge Flight on Wednesday! And if we can’t moor at the bottom of Tardebigge another 10 to Stoke Prior.
We have actually got 75 more locks to do before we get to Worcester!
