| Ten Bob Note | ||
Saturday 18th August 2007 Location: Atherstone, Warwicks Today: 2 miles, 0 locks. Total distance: 429 miles. Total locks: 370 Cloudy in the morning, rain in the afternoon. Good t-mobile 3g reception here. Pulled the pins and moved off around 08:30. Weather forecast is for heavy rain later in the day. Decided to try and get to the other side of Athertone if possible. Arrived at Atherstone bottom lock at around 09:00. We were 5th in the queue waiting at the lock. Decided that we didn’t want to spend half the day going up the eleven locks and spending half of that time queuing. Reversed the boat back a hundred yards and moored up for the day. We will get up early one morning and head up the locks while there is less traffic. We spoke to one guy that was just coming out of the bottom lock at around 10:00 and he said that they got up at 05:30 this morning to come down the locks in before the rush started – we will do the same when we decide to move on again. We walked the mile and a half or so with the dogs to Atherstone town to have a look around. It was a very pleasant walk and interesting wandering around the town centre. We grabbed a bag of chips each from the chip shop closest to the canal and sat beside one of the locks to eat them. The chips were rubbish but the dogs enjoyed a few of them. They were like tasteless cardboard. It must be very difficult to turn potatoes into cardboard but the chip shop has obviously found a way!!. Got back to the boat around 13:30 and the rain started shortly after and looks like it is on for some time. Lit the fire as it is such a dismal afternoon outside. Managed to find a fan belt in an auto shop in Atherstone. It is 5mm longer than the size I needed but it is close enough to do the job. We are now carrying a spare for everything that is easily replaceable and likely to fail. If the weather forecast is correct, we will probably stay here until Monday which is no problem as it is a nice spot and I have set up the satellite dish so we can watch the first episode of the X-factor. The first few episodes are usually amusing then once the singing starts getting serious it is not so funny. |
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Material Copyright © 2007 Ernie Williams |