On Friday evening Karen
and I cycled into Leamington for dinner.
It was the first real opportunity to spend my birthday gift of
restaurant vouchers from my four youngest.
We ended up having a bit of a bike race which was slightly unfair on me as none
of my gear changers work so I am stuck in the same gear all the time - I had to keep reminding Karen of course. We had a lovely meal and were able to ride back
home before it was too dark. An
advantage of Leamington is that it has cycle routes to the canal and therefore
we don’t have to venture onto any roads.
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| Looking forward to dinner after our cycle race |
The rest of the weekend
was really busy but most enjoyable. Well
almost all enjoyable but we had to go shopping first thing on Saturday and
neither of us enjoy shopping, especially in real shops as opposed to
on-line. We needed to get a few items for
the wedding we are going to in a couple of weeks.
In the afternoon my sister,
Judith, and Nigel came to visit. We
spent the afternoon on the boat and then walked across the fields to the pub at
Offchurch for an early evening drink. On Sunday morning we walked
with them to Leamington station so they could catch a train home and then we
met up with Kent friends, Maureen and Garry.
They were up visiting one of their sons who is at Warwick uni. Coincidentally he lives in a house right next
to the Sainsbury’s Local that Buddy and I have been visiting most days since we
have been moored at Radford Semele. We
have been passing his front door all that time and never realised.
There was also a chance
that we may have met up with other friends from Kent, Trevor and Brigitte, who
were on their way back from visiting a son in Manchester but unfortunately the
timing didn’t work out. Hopefully we can meet up next time they make the
journey. In the end we had a late lunch at the Hatton
Arms with Maureen, Garry and their son Ollie.
The Hatton Arms is a pub at the top of the Hatton flight to the west of
Warwick. We have been through the flight
of 21 locks a couple of times but never fancied the look of the pub. We were
pleasantly surprised, the food was good and it seemed to be a really popular
venue.
We got home around six and
decided to move the boat as our 14 days were up. As soon as we got to the first lock the skies
opened and we got soaked.
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| Karen crossing the bottom gates at lock 22 – Fosse bottom lock |
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| Karen opening a bottom gate at lock 21 – Fosse middle lock |
We then stopped at a water
point and Karen went in as she had a couple of hours work to do. Whilst taking on water I cycled back to the
car to move it to Welsh Road lock where we were hoping to moor for the next
week or so. The timing was perfect as
the tank was just about full when I returned.
As Karen was working I did the next couple of locks on my own.
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| Approaching lock 20 – Fosse top lock. The original single width lock is on the left |
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| Tied up in the last lock of the evening - lock 19 - Wood lock |
It was about 9.30 by the
time we were moored up – one of the latest times we have still been
cruising. There is something extra
peaceful about cruising at that time of day though and it was enhanced by the
late evening sun coming through the receding storm clouds.
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