We were up a bit later today, and untied about 8.30. A boat was coming through the lock, who Adrian went to help, so we could go straight in, and then a boat arrived behind us. The tiny lock takes no time, then I did the about turn through the bridge.
I confess I needed a blast of reverse to get round, but that was still a lot better than the boat behind, which seemed to take several minutes to make the turn! We stopped at the water point to fill the tank and get some washing on. It’s not a very fast tap. We set off again at nearly 9.30. Charity Dock is as mad as ever, and I think has some new displays.
The huge warehouse on the edge of Nuneaton now looks fully operational. There’s even a roof garden on top of the office section, which has a five storey tall atrium at the front.
At this point we started meeting boats, first the Hargreaves trip boat — but for once they were all at fairly sensible places, such as just after Boot Wharf rather than in the middle of it, because it’s always a tight squeeze.
We had lunch on the move after Hartshill, and got to the top of Atherstone Locks right behind another boat. However, with lock keepers going down with us, and boats coming up, we made good progress down the first five. It’s always a pretty flight, which helps.
By the time we got to Lock 6 another boat had set off from the moorings there, so we were following them down. It was a boat we recognised from the Crick towpath moorings, as they volunteered at the show every year. They only did four locks before stopping. At the last pair, a boat had just come up the first, but the other still needed filling.
We carried on to moor just beyond bridge 50, past Grendon Dock, and treated ourselves to an afternoon hot cross bun.
14 miles, 12 locks. (63 miles, 35 locks)