A windy day through Hinckley

Sunday 8^th June; Sutton Cheney to past Hinckley, bridges 14 - 13

Well, it didn’t rain today but although there was sunshine now and again the strong wind made it cold, and very tricky sometimes to manoeuvre – except when we were cruising straight into it, when you could feel the boat having to push against it.  We didn’t start till about 10, with our woolly hats on and collars up.  Soon we saw a llittle egret in a field.

We haven’t seen a little egret on a canal before, only on rivers.  The photo is much cropped and enlarged, so it’s rather fuzzy.

Shortly afterwards the local swan family swam by, with two little ones hitching a ride.

Beginning to get a bit too big for this now

There was quite a lot of boat traffic coming towards us, including dayboats as it’s the weekend.  Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.  We pulled in at bridge 17 in Hinckley where there is a garage, and Dave held the boat on the centre line while I went to see if I could get the paper, but the garage only has a tiny little Spar selling snacks and biscuits.  I may have felt it necessary to buy some choc chip cookies.  Once through Hinckley we found a quiet spot to stop for lunch, and although the hedge sheltered us from the worst of the wind it still made mooring hard work.  After lunch we calculated that we had plenty of time to get down to Coventry tomorrow without too much effort so we stayed where we were.  Jess and I went off for a decent walk while Dave spent time doing stuff down the engine hole.

This is how far we went.

The signal was ok tonight, so we could check our emails at last and I spent some time catching up with the blog.  There were still a few boats on the move, and three of them joined us for the night.

6 miles.  I shall be pleased to get back to locks, which won’t be till our next trip.