It was raining when we got up this morning and then there was a hail storm. Fortunately this quickly passed over and we got away shortly after 9am. We have travelled 4 miles and 3 locks from Hillmorton to Newbold. It was a fairly bitty trip with travelling half a mile then doing 2 of the locks, then a stop for me to empty the loo, doing another lock and then stopping again for water.
The water point at Hillmorton is rather shallow so we ended up quite a way from the bank. I had to press George’s gang plank into service to make it easier to get on and off during the filling process. While I was doing this Ken was down the weed hatch clearing a load of string, rope and plastic off the prop.
It was about one and a half hours from the time we set off that we finally left the water point. The rest of the journey was uneventful and we arrived at Newbold and moored up on the 14 day moorings about an hour and a half later.
We went off to the Barleymow for a pint. Then we went to the Coop for a paper. Then we went to The Crown for another pint and a game of pool. They have Sky Sports at The Crown and we had half an idea that we would return there later to watch the Chelsea v Leicester City match.
However, the arrival of Penny just after we returned to the boat changed our plan. We haven’t seen Penny for ages so we had a lot of catching up to do. This entailed going back to the Barleymow for a couple more pints, getting fish and chips and eating them at ours accompanied by two bottles of wine! One of which was Penny’s special wine bearing the same name as her boat.
While we were eating our dinner a lovely ginger cat with unusual brown eyes kept coming up to the hatch and was asking to come in. It persisted for a while then disappeared. Then it reappeared at the other hatch on the water side of the boat. It walked down the gunwales towards the front. Ken stuck his head our of the hatch to see where it was. I said to shut the hatch in case it tried to get in so he did.
Then there were some scrabbling noises and Ken looked out again to see the cat swimming past the boat! Obviously the sight of him peering through the hatch had proved too much for the poor little thing and it had fallen in the canal! We went out to try and rescue it but it was already back on the bank and running away!
Tomorrow we are all going to Rugby where we will undoubtedly end up in Wetherspoons. I mean us and Penny not us and the cat!
