I took Macc for his third off-lead runaround on the Lias Line Greenway this morning for his first walk of the day. This meant Long Itchington went into his list of top five moorings; it’s not on his humans’ list though, because it’s the first place where the EE signal has been really bad. We resorted to using our phones as hotspots again. We were ready to leave a bit earlier today at around 8.30, so gave our neighbours a knock to check they were ready too. Then both boats set off towards Itchington Bottom Lock; I walked up and was surprised the lock was empty, given that a boat had already been up.
The next lock, Stockton Bottom Lock, was full though, and so was the next one, which is the start of the flight proper, where they’re all close together. I went ahead to set each one.
A couple of locks further up there was a boat coming down, so I opened the lock for them. It turned out to be the hotel boat, Duke No3.
This meant the remaining locks were in our favour, although annoyingly they all had just a couple of inches of water in them, which meant I still had to lift a paddle. In this part of the flight, the two boats crossed the pounds together which is far easier than going in one at a time. We always calls this ‘synchronised boating’.
As we approached the top of the flight I could see the top lock being filled and a couple of boats coming down. When both locks were ready and it was time for the boats to swap, the downhill boats seemed very reluctant to leave the lock, and then didn’t seem to want to move over at all.
As we rose in the top lock, it was about 10 past 10, so the ten locks had taken just under an hour and half.
Shortly after the top lock is Stockton Top Marina, where Debdale was based when we first bought our share. Because of this, this whole area always feels like one of our boating homes.
We’d been planning to stop somewhere along the stretch between here and Calcutt, but nowhere really took our fancy. The towpaths are very narrow, which doesn’t give much room for Macc to have a mooch about. Consequently, we ended up doing Calcutt Locks with Obsession as well; they’d also not liked the look of anywhere.
Adrian was working these locks and when we went up to set the middle one saw a couple of boat coming down the top, we went left the gates open on the bottom lock. As we rose in the middle lock, a lady came down to ask if we could hold off coming out of the lock as both boats wanted to go onto the Calcutt Boats wharf, one for diesel and one for a pump out. As it would be a while before they went down, Adrian went back and closed the gates on the bottom lock. It took a while before the two boats sorted themselves out and we could do the last lock. At the top, we carried on while Obsession went onto the water point. A short distance further on is Napton Junction aka Wigram’s Turn. We were turning left onto the GU/Oxford section towards Braunston. I sounded my horn and heard nothing back, so was a bit surprised when I started my turn and found a hire boat right there.
It turned out he was turning around, but he could still have sounded his horn. We were on the look out for a nice quiet mooring with a wider towpath. The first few are close to a busy road; the moorings we’ve often used before Bridge 102 seemed to have worse towpaths than we remembered, and by Bridge 101 it’s all on a bend. So we ended up just before Bridge 100, which is often a very popular spot although there was no-one here when we arrived, and just a couple of boats the other side of the bridge. While we’d come along, Adrian had made a marmalade cake, which came out of the oven just as we arrived and has proved to be a great success.
It was 1pm when we arrived, which is late for us these days! After lunch we took Macc for a walk along the towpath and he had a run about off the lead. The promised rain then arrived. We’ve done two days boating in one day, so we’ll probably have a day off tomorrow. And I think I forgot to say yesterday that the latest podcast is out, this one from the St Richard’s Canal Festival in Droitwich. Listen to it here.
8 miles, 13 locks. (54 miles, 115 locks)