Friday 31st May
What a glorious day it’s been today, practically wall to wall sunshine, I didn’t even need a cardi on! Probably as a result of the lovely weather the canal has been like the M6!
We left fairly early and travelled firstly to the old BW yard just through Bridge 32 to get water. Fortunately there wasn’t anyone on there painting their boat today and we were soon full and on our way again….. Or we would have been if there hadn’t have been 2 boats coming under Bridge 31 just as we untied. We reversed back to the water point and waited for them to come through then, as we were going to leave again there was a boat coming up to Bridge 32 behind us, so waited for them to go by as well.
When we finally got off the water point our next port of call was Valley Cruises for diesel and coal (still not running the risk of running out!) Everyone at Valley Cruises is really friendly and helpful, we can thoroughly recommend them for all your needs! And today we got a bargain – diesel 89p/l and an extra 5% if you have over 100 l and 4 bags of coal £10-60 a bag and an extra 5% off if you have 4 or more.
There were 2 small boats already getting diesel so we had to wait for a bit until they had gone so we could get to the diesel pump. Then when we were leaving 2 boats were coming in, one from in front and one from behind so Valley Cruises were doing a roaring trade.
We continued our journey, passing through ‘allotment land’, AKA Nuneaton, to Hawkesbury. We moored on the end of a row of boats quite a long way from the junction and this proved to be a good move because subsequent investigation of the mooring situation further down (on our way to the pub) revealed there were not any more spaces this side of the junction.
We are going to stay here for a couple of days and tomorrow we will go to Nuneaton on the bus. It is market day and we hope to get another piece of excellent fish from the stall we went to last time. We will probably take the boat down to the basin in Coventry on Monday.
