Double 0 Life

 Worcester still being 58 locks away, we got up early and decided to get on with it. We passed through Alvechurch, another suburban canal side development, and went through 2 short tunnels. Getting good at this now😉 Tardebigge is a flight of 36 locks in 4 miles 😳 We knew it was coming and now we’d arrived we knew we just had to get on with it. Someone coming up said it took them about 4 hours. He said this as he jumped between the open lock gates, which we just don’t do. I calculated around 5 hours for us, one lock after the other. It was already 11.30am, but the weather forecast for the next day was solid rain, so we had a cup of tea, made some sandwiches and bit the bullet. We decided, also, to share the driving and lock winding. 😀👍 Hmmm 🤔  A single lock with no other boat coming up the flight involves:- i.  Unwind very stiff lock gate with windlass. Carefully traverse lock gate to the other side and repeat the process. Wait for lock to fill and carefully cross bac...

Onwards from the pub to the next flight of locks, the Lapworth flight. This was fine, but we were getting concerned that we had only seen one place where you could stock up with Diesel, way back, and we were not sure if our gauge was working. Andy kept dipping the tank and it seemed we might have half a tank left, but when we finally passed a marina that sold fuel we reversed and moored up to get some. I’m making this sound easy.  Filling a tank while holding onto the centre line while moored alongside the marina owner’s boat! Other boaters not being aware were going past quite fast, disturbing the water and causing the boats to separate…., and I found myself trying to do the splits to keep from falling in the canal.  But we filled up with fuel and water somehow. This is always a good feeling, so we continued very merrily along past the Southern suburbs of Birmingham. We thought this would be ugly, but a lot of canalside development has improved the look from the water, and it...

 We left the Hatton flight behind after an overnight pub stop, and had some fairly uneventful motoring towards the Kingswood junction.  This involved the Shrewley tunnel, which was a doddle after Braunston. It has an extra tunnel for the horses to go through as there wasn’t room for a towpath!  Our next drama was a bit of a surprise. At the Kingswood junction, we knew we would have to negotiate a left turn, and then get the correct right hand turn to get on the Warwickshire ring.  None of this is anything like you would expect. The canal pound was quite shallow, and Andy took a wide turn before attempting to turn the sharp left hand turn. Before he knew it the bow of Double 0 had mounted the shallow right hand sandbank instead of going left, and we were listing, stuck, dead stopped and looking embarrassed to say the least. A few swear words, and me pushing like hell with a barge pole, it was no use. Stuck solid on the sandbank. Fortunately, other boaters tend to be f...

 So we went from Leamington Spa to Warwick, with a couple of nights moored by a lovely canal side pub, basking in sunshine.  We spent a whole day looking round Warwick Castle which dates back originally to 1068, when William the Conqueror built a wooden Fortress, upgraded by Henry VIII much later. It is a great day out, not just the castle, full of Madame Tussaud’s wax figures, but also a couple of medieval shows, including a falconry display.  We stayed an extra couple of days round the bend in Saltisford Marina (thank you Margy!) and Andy’s girls drove up together and paid us a visit  So after a week of laundry, shopping, and many pub lunches, we recognised that this was all an avoidance ploy as the next stage of our journey involved doing 21 locks in a row, the Hatton staircase!  So Monday morning we were up bright and early, fenders down, Windlass located. All we had to do was empty our black water tank. The Marina crew were ready, when suddenly I realised w...

 Lost track of time, but on Sunday it was 26 degrees and we did 10 locks in the heat. Lucky for me we shared the locks with another boat, but the following day I made sure to do all the manoeuvres so that Andy could do some winding!  We are now in Leamington Spa, moored right by the town. At last we have some accessible shops! Raining today, but our boat is cosy.  I got my clarinet fixed in a fabulous music shop, and Andy got his watchstrap repaired. Nice town. We’ll stay a couple of days. 

 Today was amazing. We did our first tunnel. https://youtu.be/2-KFVgTWeVQ?si=hjwWoTWlArBh5vmQ After this we settled for a couple of days by a canal side pub. It was Andy’s birthday so his brother and sister in law drove up to meet us there. Real Ale and pub food.  Next we bought pork pies from the local butcher and travelled West to the countryside somewhere! 

 Today we did our first locks. We had done all of this 20 years ago with friends, but this felt like a big day, also because the Buckby locks are notoriously heavy. We did our homework, checked them out, and chummed up with some holiday boaters that had a rough idea of what not to do etc.   We survived the first five locks, then moored and went to the pub!  But we have actually had the most idyllic day 😊 English weather can turn it on sometimes. 🙃

 Hello to anyone who’s interested😃 As you know, Andy and I took a long voyage on the Queen Mary and had a lovely time getting to England. It was great at first, but like all good things, it wore off, particularly from Capetown when a boatload of guests with a cheap deal brought a bunch of viruses on board (Capetown water not good) and made it all a lot less pleasant.  But we met some lovely people and had some good moments, and the ship herself is magnificent.  So, we were picked up by Aunty in Southampton from the ship, and a whirlwind of visiting relatives followed. The next 48hours was exhausting but gorgeous. We were lucky enough to visit Nikki on her boat and their sheep had just had some lambs the day before But by the third night we were comfortably sleeping on board our new boat, Double 0… We were lucky enough to borrow brother-in-law‘s car, so several trips to Sainsbury’s and Habitat enabled us to kit out the boat with duvets, teaspoons etc. Enough to live comfo...