Monday, February 28, 2011

Looking for a dry bit of towpath….

And here’s why…..

Leaving “Glastonbury”

We’ve put up with this since arriving on Saturday, but we had to move today. Fed up with having to bath the dogs after a walk, with scrubbing their feet and legs after only going out for a pee, with having to wash boots every time we get back onboard.

The towpath doesn’t improve much until the canal approaches Lapworth.

We would have moved on yesterday, but the wet and windy weather was off-putting. A case of the lesser of two evils….

The canal is pleasantly rural, only coming close to Hockley Heath on the way to Lapworth. We left our options open today, getting off early in case we wanted to press on down the Lapworth flight of 20 locks (to the Grand Union), but keeping our eyes open for a likely mooring spot part way down.

In Lapworth Top Lock.

We dropped down the first four locks (numbers 2 to 5, Lock 1 being the guillotine lock at Kings Norton) and pulled in on the ½ mile pound before the thick of the flight. The towpath is pretty dry here. It’ll do for tonight, we’ll drop down the rest of the locks tomorrow.

I’ve cocked up the route planning. When we get to the Grand Union Canal we were heading down to Hatton Locks, expecting to get through them and into Warwick by tomorrow afternoon. But Hatton Locks are closed for gate replacement, and won’t re-open until 11th March. So we’ll have to potter about till then. Ah well.

Locks 4, miles 4

2 comments:

Adam said...

If you've got time to kill, you could do a lot worse than pottering up to the Knowle Locks, which are very attractive and surrounded by nice countryside. In fact, I quite like the GU route into Brum (although I see the Camp Hill Locks are closed at the moment too, not that you'd want to go that far anyway...)

Geoff and Mags said...

Thanks Adam,
That's just what we're doing....