Late post

I has been a long day and not just because of the cruising.  We left Polesworth at 8.30 passing nb Achernar after a mile of cruising.  They had left us a comment on yesterday’s post mentioning there hadn’t been a nibble on the end of his line all day.  I guess that meant dinner last night was crackers rather than fish!

We stopping at the CRT services beside Bradley Green Bridge to dispose of the rubbish and top up the water tank.  Good water pressure from the tap meant this was only a brief stop before we reached the bottom of the Atherstone Flight.  There was a colourful field of bright red poppies along the way.

On approaching the bottom lock we noticed a boat already waiting to go up.  It was nb Otter Magic owned by Lynne & John.  We last saw them on the Kennet & Avon back in 2012.

There was no one behind us and all but two of the 11 locks were against us.  However John was kindly raising one lower paddle as Otter Magic left each lock.  We had to wait at Lock 9 for nb Gerald.  The volunteer lock keeper assisting them down told us the boat was 107 years old.

I hope I look that good at107.

There are good moorings between locks 5 and 6. We stopped here two years ago when I took the defective 175A alternator to the nearby Cox’s Automotive for a rebuild.  Today I noticed there was an electric powered boat on the moorings.

Twin drives with an interesting dual steering arrangement.  Must be a slow trip around the network!

The top three locks each had a volunteer lock keeper in attendance which sped up our progress.  By now it was starting to get decidedly hot.

Top lock

Scorecard

The moorings at Polesworth were 90% vacant and yet the moorings above the lock at Atherstone were 100% full?????  We found a temporary mooring and I then walked back down the flight to Aldi for some essential supplies.  Actually I had a good walk around the centre of the village because I’d geographically embarrassed myself.  The Aldi is opposite the large Cooperative and I’d missed it.

Once back at Waiouru a decision was made to continue on and find a quiet rural mooring for the night.  Around Stoneleigh Quarry Farm we noticed an interesting moored boat. 

We didn’t see any Alpaca’s on the towpath but there were a few in the adjacent field.

Eventually we moored just before Hartshill and had a very late lunch.  By now it was very hot and we were quite dehydrated.  Two cleansing cold lagers were not enough!  By 6pm the exterior of the boat was no longer too hot to touch so I went out and washed, T-Cut and polished half the port side.  That might have been a mistake as the sweat was popping out of me faster than I could replace it.  The problem is sometime in the last few days we must have moored under the wrong tree.  As a consequence the entire exterior of Waiouru is covered in a thin film of sticky resin.