We left
Braunston on Monday morning and started heading north again. Buddy seemed happy to get back into the
countryside and was particularly interested in this flock of Canada geese.
We
descended the last two locks on the Braunston flight and stopped for water at
the bottom. Karen took the opportunity
to mop down the outside of the boat.
This is Braunston
junction known as Braunston Turn; west to Oxford & Birmingham and north to Coventry. We turned right (north) onto the Oxford
canal. Since moving aboard four weeks
ago we have covered 97 miles and been through 93 locks.
It was
lovely being on the northern part of the Oxford canal as it is a narrow-locked
canal which means there would be no more wide beam boats. It also meant we could move onto a new
guide/map book. So it was goodbye to the
well-used ‘Grand Union, Oxford and the South East’ and hello to the pristine ‘Birmingham and the heart
of England' with lack of capitalisation.
These
guides are a must when cruising, not only do they contain detailed Ordnance
Survey maps of the canals and surrounding areas, they give important information
about boat yards, water points, navigational notes, supermarkets, pubs and places to visit etc.
After a
while we went along the 1 ½ mile Barby straight – a bit boring to be going dead
straight for so long but we went under the M45 which confirmed to me that we
are heading north.
At Hillmorton
we went down a flight of three locks. A
strange experience to be back on narrow locks; we have been going through wide
locks for the last 15 months. The
Hillmorton lock flight is slightly different to most in that it is a flight of narrow
locks in pairs. Karen is just walking away from the left hand lock as she has just set it for a guy coming down on his own. The locks were built
like this to get the traffic through quicker.
Apparently this section to Coventry from Braunston was very busy which
makes sense as the remainder of the journey to London was on broad locks so
narrow locks would have caused a bottle neck.
We
arrived at Rugby at about three and walked into the town centre to try and get
Karen’s phone fixed. We popped in at Tesco on the way back for our last big
shop before we go back to Kent for Christmas. We will probably have a quiet day tomorrow as
it is forecast to be windy which is not ideal for cruising.
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