Autumn Cruise: Day 10

Another fine and sunny day.  A boat went past towards the locks at 8 and we set off about 20 minutes later.  A gap in the moorings suggested another boat had also set off early.  When we got to the locks a single handed lady was ahead of us, so I helped by holding open a gate which kept closing, and then closing gates after her.  As she was leaving one of the early locks her engine cut as as something was round the prop.  It turned out to be one of her centre lines, so she pulled in to sort it out and said we should go ahead of her.  There was another boat behind us, so I refilled each lock as we left, for whichever boat ended up coming down next.  The Wilmcote Flight has three distinct sections, of three locks, then five, then three more.  The five middle ones really are very close.

At the bottom of the locks we stopped for water and got some washing going.  There were then five more locks into Stratford.  One of them has a Premier Inn one side and McDonald’s the other.

At one of the locks I was halfway out the lock when the boat stuck solid.  Lots of the gates here don’t seem to open fully, and we suspect our base plate caught on the gate.  Adrian flushed some water down from above and eventually we were floating free again.  A similar thing happened a bit further down.  By lunchtime we’d arrived at Bancroft Basin, and settled onto a pontoon mooring. They’re not very long, so you have to be a bit creative to tie up using a centre line.  At least one boat has left and the trip boat goes every hour down onto the river, but none of the boats we know were behind us has arrived — or if they have they’ve left again while we were out.

After lunch we went to do the tourist thing.  We’d bought the multi-property ticket at Mary Arden’s Farm yesterday, so went to the three town centre Shakespeare Birthplace Trust places.  First was Hall’s Croft, where his daughter lived — for two years.

Then New Place, which has been demolished, but has fantastic gardens.  This was our favourite of the three.

Finally we went to the Shakespeare birth place and centre, which was absolutely heaving.

Back at the basin we had an ice cream and walked along the river.  While there, we bumped into so,e guys who are on a Kate Hire boat, whom we’d also seen this morning as they walked from Wilmcote to Stratford.  We then got the hand powered chain ferry across the river.

We have bought our Avon licence from the floating office in the basin, ready for going down onto the river tomorrow.  We’ll need to get some food in before we go as the fridge is pretty bare; consequently we’re thinking we might eat out tonight, given that we’re in a metropolis.

4 miles, 16 locks.  (86 miles, 106 locks)

June Cruise - Day Four

After yesterday's evening of drinking and eating with Bruce and Sheila from Sanity Again (and we know exactly how many bottles were consumed, as we'd been to the rubbish point that morning), I didn't sleep that well.  But we still managed to stay in bed longer than other mornings this trip.  Before we set off Sanity Again came past, and we also did a job that we've been meaning to do for a while: remove the dangling side fenders.  We don't see the need to have fenders deployed when travelling, in fact they are liable to cause more problems than they solve.  They were attached to fender eyes in the gunwales with shackles, some of which were badly rusted and needed a squirt of WD40 to get them moving.  We did the towpath side ones first, and the other side once we were in the lock.

It was a lovely morning -- sunny and warm, and the dappled sunshine through the trees made for a magical scene.  It really is a very beautiful canal, even if the locks feel like hard work and the bridges are very narrow and often strangely skewed across the canal.

We crossed a number of aqueducts, a tiny one at Yarningale, a bigger one high over the A3400 at Wooton Wawen (where we passed Sanity Again moored up), and a long one at Edstone.  Because the towpath is below the level of the water there's even more sense of flying that crossing the Ponty.

We got to Wilmcote at around 12 -- once again reaching our planned overnight stop at lunchtime.  We had lunch and decided to go down the flight of locks.  We were quite lucky with the number of boats coming up, so many of the locks were in our favour.  It's clearly the day for hire boats to be heading back.  They're very pretty locks, and it was really warm.

The moorings at the bottom of the locks are overshadowed by the rather noisy A46, so we made the decision to fill up with water at the water point, then press on to Stratford.  Many of the boats we'd passed said there was plenty of space at Bancroft Basin.  The journey was little more than an hour and a half, passing through the less touisty bits of the town.  On arrival in the basin I did (even though I do say so myself), a great spin to reverse onto one of the pontoons.  We have the statue of Shakespeare and Hamlet behind us.  We went for a walk, bought our Avon licence from the floating office in the basin, and went up the new tower at the theatre, for great views of the town and the surrounding area (although there's a tree in the way of the basin).  As we're in a town, we may go out to eat tonight.

11 miles, 24 locks.  (48 miles, 83 locks)