Wednesday 29th May
A dry start to the day encouraged us to move on from Fazeley Junction, about 6 miles and the 2 Glascote Locks, to Polesworth. We were going to go further but more of that later.
Before we left this morning my first task was to arrange our BSC test with Nigel Carton. I phoned him and he agreed to come to Hawkesbury Junction on Friday 7th June to do it. It isn’t actually due until 27th July but you can have it done up to 2 months early. Nigel was recommended to us by Penny and we wanted to get it done while we were still in his area.
So with that organised we set off first to the sanitary station at Peel’s Wharf, just across the canal from where we were moored up. We had only seen one boat moving before we left but all this was soon set to change.
Firstly, there were 2 boats coming under Bridge 76 at the junction when we got there. Then there were 2 boats waiting to come over the Tame aqueduct when we got there. Then there was a CRT barge coming under the railway bridge near the Tamworth Cruising Club when we got there. And finally there was a motor boat and butty coming down Glascote Locks when we got there. It took us an hour to get from the sanitary station at Peel’s Wharf to the top of the locks, just over a mile.
The following 2 hours of our trip to Polesworth was uneventful. We moored up at Bridge 52 with the intention of travelling on later to Bradley Green, so we would be nearer to the bottom of the Atherstone flight of locks, ready for tomorrow’s onslaught.
We walked in to the village for a paper, bread, veg and the customary pint. Just as we got to the bridge over the river there was a fairly loud explosion and smoke began pouring out from under one of the arches. This was closely followed by several small boys! They had obviously been up to no good under there.
In the pub I took a photo (see gallery) of a fairly unusual notice in the Ladies loo. I have to say haven’t seen anything like it before and I have been in a lot of Ladies loos!
It was raining hard when we came out of the pub so we abandoned any plans to travel any further today and stayed where we were.
