Back on the Grand Union

Good Year Airship.

Haven't seen this for quite a while. Didn't realise it was still flying. Probably on a test run for the Olympics.

So having retraced our steps back up the Southern Section of the Stratford Canal to Kingswood Junction we entered the very short arm linking the Stratford to the Grand Union, turned right, sorry....to starboard, and headed south.

On our way we spotted this novel use of old Wellies:

It seems to work as I did catch a bird making use of it as we passed.

Having worked lots of locks yesterday we very soon pulled in for the night but discovered that there wasn't as much water in the GUC as we thought. Cruising in the middle lane, something I complain bitterly about when drivers do it on a motorway, was all well and good and usually the safest thing to do on any canal, but when we tried to edge close to the bank we started to touch the silt and whatever else was lurking below the waterline. I backed off and tried again a little further along. This time we got in but not without disturbing the silt and mud beneath us. Not sure what happened during the night but both Sue and I were awoken more than once by strange gurglings, and it wasn't my stomach for a change. We think it was the water level rising overnight lifting us off the silt. Though Sue did drag me outside at 2:15am to check we weren't sinking!!!

Tempranillo uses the water for ballast by taking it into a sort of colander system along the length of the hull. Hopefully it was just air escaping. It was perfectly OK later when we faced the 21 locks of The Hatton Flight.

Looking down on the Hatton Lock Flight with a Warwick Church Tower at the bottom.

You may remember not long after we left Crick Marina for the last time all those weeks ago and set sail for Birmingham, we rose up through Hatton locks together with the very helpful Nick and his old work boat who is a regular here. This time we met up with the crew of 'Jenella'. They were renters on the last leg of their holiday returning the boat to Warwick. Unusually for renters, in our experience, they were extremely considerate and could not have been more helpful, holding their 15 ton steel boat on ropes in each of the 21 locks so as not to damage our much lighter aluminium Tempranillo.

We are very grateful for their help which got us from top to bottom in three hours. Pretty good going. Not sure we would have got through before dark without them.

Having thanked them and said our goodbyes we rounded a bend and found a boat owner with a similar outlook on life as us:

CHEERS!