Who said we were not going to be in a hurry any more?

(Boat Chalice - posted by Alan)

Atherstone locks yet again - we will need to do them one more time with "Sickle"!

So much for our new found resolve that we will rush around less when boating!

We have greatly enjoyed a mix of making reasonable progress interspersed with much shorter boating days, and I think we will increasingly get into that.



 

Historic boat "Warbler" turns onto the Ashby canal, as we will with "Sickle"

However, we had fairly ambitious plans this year with "Sickle's" events calaendar, but also wanted to get in a longish summer trip with "Chalice" as well.  For reasons I'll not bother to explain, although Cath has retired we are still in a situation where at the moment we need to be back home during school term time.  This means that much boating with the two of us will not for a while really be possible, except at weekends, once the summer holiday ends.

Modern push tug - not hard to see why they make a lot of wash!

So we suddenly realised that we had barely enough time to both get "Chalice" back to her home mooring, but also to move "Sickle" on to her next event - the Shackerstone Festival.  But of course, if we pressed on quite hard, we could probably just do it......

"Bexhill" - The first full length working boat I ever steered.

The rest you can guess - we needed to condense what might normally be at least four and a half days boating into rather less than four.  Here we go agaikn - so much for taking it easy!

There were absolutely no coloured lights on this trip,

Newbold Tunnel was given decorative lights some years ago, but they have been slowly failing over time, and on the way up, only a handful were still working.  However on the way back there were none at all.  Have they thrown in the towel, and decided to turn off what remained?







Atherstone (below lock 9) to below Hillmorton Locks
Miles: 27.9 (Chalice), Locks: 10

Total Miles: 375.4, Locks: 204