A noisy night and a vigorous day

Sunday 23^rd April; Dickens Heath to Kingswood Junction

It rained for some hours last night.  Annoyingly we hadn’t checked the forecast yesterday, so hadn’t realised so much rain was forecast – so we moored under trees without a care in the world.  Rain by itself is a regular sound and lulls you to sleep, but trees add a noisy variable to this and the sum of the two is a noisy rattle.  We won’t make that mistake again in a hurry!  And what was equally annoying was that the roof was covered with little bits of tree and the towpath was now full of puddles.

I borrowed Dave’s wellies as being easier to clean than my own boots.  A little large, but I only took Meg out briefly and then squelched up to Tesco for the Sunday paper. 

Bonjour from the road bridge

I tried a short cut, which turned out not to be, and shortly before I found Tesco I met a polite and dapper gent with a red rose in his buttonhole.  ‘Happy St George’s Day!” he said with a bright smile.  So I returned his greeting.  I made a detour onto a grassy area, which I suspect might be called the “village green”, and took a photo of a big building which called itself the Village Hall. 

The ones I’m familiar with are much more modest in scale, but this seems to be more than just a hall and looks capable of holding large functions as well as the usual run of fitness classes, Brownies and WI meetings.  Ideally placed next to the green as well. Back I went along the muddy towpath.

We left at 9.20 for the few miles to the Lapworth locks.  It was grey but not raining, and cold, very cold, but the blackthorn shone

and the marsh marigolds at Hockley Heath gleamed in the gloom.

I warmed up with the two windlass operated lift bridges, which take a lot of winding, before we started down the locks at about 11.30.  These locks are not deep, so Dave was able to help with the lower gates and still easily get back on board.  We made good progress even though there was a boat in front of us.

If you’ve got your own online mooring, why not paint your house and boat to match? lock 5.

That house is above lock 5.  A bit further on, below lock 7, the towpath changes sides and the cotton-reel roller for the old tow-ropes is still there on the bridge.

There were no volunteers on the flight today, and apart from passing a single-hander and spotting a boat several locks ahead of us there were only dog-walkers and the occasional runner to be seen.  One runner looked exhausted – he had a race number on his front, and as today is London Marathon day it is a fair bet he was doing the Virtual London Marathon – you pay a fee, get your number, and then do the run on your own.  There wasn’t the opportunity to talk to him unfortunately, but I do hope he finished.

The boat we were following pulled in for lunch in the longer pound below lock 14, but it turned out they were also following a boat down – and this one was on the water point where we had hoped to stop.  So we went on down one more lock and pulled in on the facilities mooring at Kingswood Junction.  This tap is quite slow, but we had time – we wanted to moor for the night just around the corner.  It was 2.30 by now, and though we’d had various snacks as we came down the locks, and there was time for a very welcome cup of tea while we filled the water tank, we were looking forward to lunch!  which had to wait until we had reversed a bit and gone through the link to moor.

It doesn't look as though there would have been room, but Dave had checked while we were on the water point and there was space for us to the right just beyond the link. At last we had some lunch!  Then Dave took Meg off for a walk, luckily returning before 5 when the rain started, but we are not beneath trees tonight and are hoping for a quieter night.

7 miles, 19 locks, 2 lift bridges