Buddy and I have spent most of this week taking walks around Warwick and up and down the Hatton flight.
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Looking up the top end of
the flight on Thursday - still covered in ice
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The weather has been mainly
dry this week, so Karen has been able to walk to and from work without getting too
wet. Now she is winding down she has
managed to reduce her hours, so gets home in the light which is good and makes
us feel even more spring-like 😊
Even though all the ice
has melted around us, most of the pounds higher up the flight still have a fair
amount of ice on them. Although most of
the snow had gone by Monday evening, the remnants of drifts are still
around. These remnants really seem to
fascinate Buddy; he makes a beeline for them and just stands in the snow.
On Tuesday I took the boat
down to the Saltisford arm again, this time to get a new gas bottle, but whilst
there I also filled up with water.
There seemed to be quite a
few people on the arm pottering around their boats and speaking to a couple of
them it transpired that they are getting them ready to set off cruising for ‘the
season’. Many people winterise their
boats and leave them in marinas for the winter and then cruise from Easter until
late summer. Each year, we seem to meet
more and more people who cruise for six months in the UK and then spend the
other six months in their holiday home on the continent.
The people I spoke to were
both planning to set off at the beginning of April, one couple down to London
and the south and the other couple will be heading north.
When we were moored
outside Lidl in Leamington a couple of weeks ago, there was a rather worrying
incident. It was about midday and I was
having my lunch indoors when I felt the boat rock and heard the sound of the
rear doors being opened. I shouted and ran
down the boat to see what was happening only to see three young men running off
down the towpath. There was a set of wet
footprints on the rear deck, so it seemed only one was on board.
I assume they were just
being opportunistic, but it seems a bit odd to go into a boat that is obviously
not locked so probably has people inside.
Other than being cast adrift in the middle of the night on the
Huddersfield Narrow canal, this was the only other unnerving experience we have
ever had. We have probably been
fortunate as we have been to some pretty dodgy places in our travels over the
years.
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No ice round us now
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After getting the gas on
Tuesday I had originally planned on cruising down the Cape locks and going back
to Leam but Karen and I fancy trying the Catalan restaurant in Warwick before
we leave, so it was another long reverse back to the bottom lock at Hatton from where it's an easy walk into town.
For those of you who read
the last blog entry, you may remember that I rescued a fieldfare from the
Oxford canal in Cropredy at the weekend. Mike was in
touch during the week and suggested that it had got drunk from all the rotten
apples it had been feeding on in the garden next to the canal. This is probably true as the same thing happens
to butterflies feeding on windfalls in late autumn.
Talking about butterflies
reminds me that we have still not seen any yet this year but with a mild
Saturday forecast we’ll be out butterflying so, who knows, we may get lucky.
On Wednesday I drove over
to Springwood Haven marina just north of Nuneaton on the Coventry canal to pick
up a new ignition barrel that I need to replace our intermittently faulty one.
Yesterday I took Buddy to
the vets to get his passport. I attempted
this a couple of weeks ago, but he couldn’t have his rabies injection as he had
an ear infection. The infection has now
gone, he has had his rabies jab and we are now waiting for his passport to be
made up, so we can pick it up next week.
For people who think their
passports are expensive, Buddy’s passport was £80 and his rabies jab £60, so they
are getting off lightly 😉 Bearing in mind the courses Karen and I are on in a month's time, the
costs of taking the boat over to France for a couple of years are mounting, and
not slowly!
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Us from the other side of
the cut
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It looks like we are
moored in the middle of a housing estate; well, I suppose we are, but with the
high fences we are totally unaware of the houses. Very few people walk along this stretch of
towpath, so it does feel very quiet even though it doesn’t look it 😉
It seems that every time
we look out across the water here we see a water vole on the opposite
bank. The strange thing is, is that it's
always scurrying from the left to the right and we never see it
going back the other way.
Must go now – fingers crossed
for butterfly sightings this weekend. Oh, and only four weeks left on the countdown!
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