March 21st. The Hatton Locks!

After a lovely weekend with family and friends, we settled back onto the boat on Sunday. On Monday morning we faffed about a bit. Robin cycled to Sainsbury's to get all the things we had forgotten to bring back. Eventually we took the plunge and set off towards the Hatton Locks. In the next 5 hours we travelled 2 miles and went up 21 locks with just one cup of tea on the way! At the bottom we met a couple of volunteer lock keepers who said they were going for their lunch but would catch us up. That was the last we saw of them and we did the flight on our own. We got a good routine going and it all went pretty smoothly, although the paddles were very hard going! The locks go round in a big curve so you can't see them all at once but ...

..looking up from here they were quite daunting..

...and looking the other way you can see some of the ones we had already done.


Further on (almost at the top-only 4 more to go) you can look back to one of Warwick's church spires in the
distance and see how far and high you have come.

We moored thankfully at the top at around 5.30. It's in a cutting and there is clearly a sheep field on the far side as these lambs had escaped to eat interesting things among the trees. They were very sure footed of course, and fun to watch but their mothers were making a great racket trying to persuade them back into the field!    

 

 

We are now in uncharted territory (for us) and tomorrow we will head for the Kingswood Junction and the Stratford-on-Avon canal.