More rain early in the morning, but it was dry when we set
out at 9.00. It stayed dry until we reached Atherstone Locks and then it
started to rain again. We met boats coming down in all but one of the first six
locks – all of us looking increasingly bedraggled as we got wetter and wetter.
We stopped briefly for coffee between Locks 6 & 5. We know that you shouldn’t
moor by just a centre line, but we thought we’d be OK for the short time it
would take us to have coffee. Wrong!! A big, heavy boat going too quickly past
us caused us to rock violently and the weakest point gave way. This turned out
to be the fairlead which ripped completely off. As it didn’t fall in the water,
Steve was able to rescue it. The fixing screws had sheared and although he
managed to remove some bits, others defeated him for the moment.
On we went to the last five locks which were quickly done as
they were all set for us except top lock which was kindly emptied and set ready
for us by Ian, one of the team of VLKs. The rain had stopped while we were
having coffee so these last locks were completed without getting any wetter. We
moored on the Visitor Moorings above the locks while we had lunch (Gabriel with
James and Hazel aboard are here too). The rain soon started again so we decided
to stay where we were.
Later on, the rain stopped again and we went to the White
Horse for a meal where we had excellent pizzas. And they packed up what we couldn’t eat –
that’s tomorrow’s lunch sorted.
11 locks 4.75
miles Totals 27 locks 48.75 miles
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