Back to the blog .....
After loitering around the Brinklow area for weeks, we headed back to Atherstone in order to be down the locks before the stoppage on 7th Jan. We had a couple of nights at the top of the locks, which gave me time to visit Rachel & Co while they were still on school holidays. One bus to Coventry, then a second to Kenilworth. Very easy. We descended the locks on the Saturday before the Monday planned stoppage, and moored in one of our favourite places, in the long pound between locks 9 & 10. After a flurry of boats up and down on Saturday and Sunday, needless to say, we didn't see another boat for days. Not that CRT had started any work on the locks by the Wednesday when we left, but a couple of work boats had been moored with their equipment below lock 7, so I guess they've started working on it by now.
Nice to see the geese still here between locks 5 & 6, they weren't here when we came up the locks back in November, and I had thought they'd gone the same way as the Chirk Bank geese (but that's another story)
Geese slipway
Above and below locks 6 & 7, there is always polystyrene pieces in the canal
(is it just a coincidence that Barry Hawkins' yard is slap bang in the middle of it)
More lingering polystyrene
Work boats below lock 7 waiting to start work, the white bits in the off side edge is more polystyrene
River levels back to normal - you can see the field now!
What a lovely day for crusing!
Loads of room at Grendon moorings
Oh oh - just what you don't want to see on an elsan point -
(the "out of order CRT aware" yellow tag - not the lamp)
Horah!! Just what you do want to see when the elsan is "out of order" the effluent removal truck.
We were about to leave the services point when this pulled up, so we thought we'd hang around & empty as necessary when the tank had been emptied. However, we quickly changed our minds when the man hole lid was removed. Jeeessss! We scarpered very quickly & headed for Fazeley instead - we can last another day! What an awful job for the poor driver.
Whilst we were in Atherstone, I went for my biannual hair cut. Unfortunately I booked the wrong hairdressers in the Market Square (doh), so I missed out on the entertainment provided by the Hilda Baker sound alike hairdresser, who last time talked of "audience survey maps" and planes with "avian fluid" (or was it aviation flu). You could make a wig with the hair left on the floor! I did sweat a bit when I went to the till to pay, and saw shelves of shampoo for £13.50 and conditioner at £17.50. Gulp. I slowly handed over my £29.95. That's my beer money gone for the month then.
What a lovely mooring ......
We're going to head to Fradley as the weather forecasters are talking of a "big freeze", with a quick detour to Kingsbury Water Park down the Birmingham Fazeley canal. Hope we can get from there before it does freeze, as there's not much else there! Dave want's to see the birds at the RSPB reserve, apparently there's a Hooper Swan about according to Tame Valley Birding. So no next blog will be loads of pics of birds,and beer report from The Dog and Doublet, local imbibing spot!
3 comments:
Yes, we were unable to add pictures direct from the computer, the option has disappeared, we now have to load them onto our Picasa online album and then onto the blog.
Les and I had the same problem with Blogger until we swapped browsers: we now use FireFox and have no problems uploading pics to our blog.
Your post title made me think of Buzz Lightyear--"To infinity and beyond!"
Stay warm and Dry!
Thanks for the solutions. Blogger knows the problem & say they're working on it & hope to get it sorted. Loads of people having problems judging by number of results when i googled it! Glad its not just me. Sue.
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