Woolly hats and baseball caps…

Yesterday was a ‘game of two halves’.  We awoke to a heavy frost, and set off at about 8.30 (quite early for us), with full cold weather gear on – woolly hats, thick fleeces and gloves.  We stopped for some shopping at about 9.30 in Amington, and had to strip off layers, and by the time we set off again we were just in jumpers and the sun was so strong that we needed baseball caps to shield our eyes.

Frost at 8 o’clock

We made good time down the two locks at Glascote and had turned left at Fazeley Junction before lunchtime.  We wanted to water and empty a loo cassette at Peel’s Wharf, but someone was on the water point washing his boat, and as there is only room for one boat we continued on.  Suddenly there was a strong whiff of muck spreading in the air, and we spied a farmer dumping silage from a tractor and trailer at the edge of his field.  The pile went on for what seemed like miles, all along the edge of this enormous field, and the stench was horrific.

Really glad we weren’t moored where these boat were – you can see the beginning of the pile along the right hand bank

We came through Hopwas, which is one of my favourite canal-side villages, past Hopwas Woods, where Cassie and I had an adventure and almost got lost a couple of years ago.

Hopwas Woods

By this time we had received a text from Karen on nb Serenity to let us know the state of the moorings at Fradley to help us decide if we were going to push on or stop before we got there.  The moorings were filling up fast and we were an hour and a half away but we decided to chance it and push on.  Karen and Ian were walking up to meet us as we approached the last bridge before the Junction.

Karen running ahead to secure our mooring spot before we lost it

When we were tied up, a celebratory drink (or three)in the Mucky Duck (The Swan) was called for.

Groundhog day – if you look back a year on the blog you’ll find a similar photo

Today we stayed where we were (apart from us moving up onto the armco from the rough bank).  We met up for coffee on Serenity and then went for our habitual Sunday Lunch in the pub – it felt like the last 8 months just hadn’t happened, and here we were, cruising together again.  This afternoon we had a walk to work off lunch, and went looking for a geocache, which we found fairly easily – we dropped off the Path-tag which we had found in a previous cache, and also launched our second Travel Bug.  If anyone who reads our blog finds it, please move it on to somewhere else on the Inland Waterways of the UK.

The Travel Bug and the cache

14.3 miles and 2 locks