Today we got off to a bit of a late start. I woke up at 7 am with a bad back so I got up, took some tablets and went back to bed. Ken woke up and I thought he would soon want to get up but we both went back to sleep until 8!
It was gone 9-30 am by the time we left (I was still in the bathroom at the time) but as we hadn’t planned to go very far it didn’t matter. However, things conspired against us because about half a mile from Swarkestone a jogger ran past and told us there was a tree across the canal.
As a boat had passed us a few minutes earlier we thought the canal couldn’t be totally blocked. We came round the corner and lo and behold the canal was well and truly blocked. We stopped and moored up. There were already 4 boats the other side of the blockage and someone had phoned CRT.
More boats joined the queue coming towards us but we were still the only one going our way. After about an hour some of the people in the queue started to get impatient and one of them pulled their boat forward and they started trying to cut bits off the tree with a bow saw. Others got their boat hooks out, for whatever reason.
By this time there were 11 boats in the queue. We went off to the garage for a paper and some milk then to the Crewe and Harpur. When we returned (about 90 mins later) the tree and the queue had disappeared.
We had intended to go to Ragley Boat Stop today so we could go to Asda, do a big shop and get a taxi back. We also needed to get water fairly soon which we could do at Swarkestone. It was still quite early and the weather forecast for later tonight and tomorrow was pretty grim. Should we stay or should we carry on to Ragley?
We decided to carry on and if we couldn’t get in at Ragley we would go on to Willington. So off we went, or at least we would have except there was a boat coming from behind us, one coming towards us and another one coming behind. And we were grounded so we couldn’t pull out anyway!
Eventually we got under way and obviously had to wait at Swarkestone lock for the two boats which had just passed us to go up. When it was our turn we were assisted at the lock by a strange chap who told Ken his boat was out of action but he had to help at the lock because people do it wrong! He didn’t speak to me, he just kept smiling.
When we got up the lock we had to wait at the tap while one of the boats which had just gone up in front of us filled up. This didn’t take too long but as we were ready to leave yet another boat passed us and it was going so slowly we had to crawl along behind them in tickover!
When we got to Ragley there was a space in the middle so we stopped. It had taken 2 hours to go 2 miles and 1 lock! We will stay here tomorrow.
