Saturday 5th August 2006
Radford Semele - Wootton Wawen (19¼ miles, 41 locks)
Jen and I got up early and she worked the last lock at Radford. An hour and a half later we moored at the Tesco store on the outskirts of Warwick. We were too early for the café, so we did our food shopping first and then had breakfast. There were no other boats at Cape or Hatton Locks so we set out on our own through the drizzling rain, arriving at the top in less than two hours and ten minutes.
During our trip through Hatton at Easter on our way to Birmingham, we had called in at the café near the top lock to order a cast metal sign with our house name and number. We had paid a deposit and arranged to collect it four months later. However, it appeared that they needed four months and one hour, so we agreed to try again on our return trip the following Wednesday.
At Kingswood Junction, we turned down the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal. Compared to the wide locks on the Grand Union Canal, the narrow locks on the southern section of the Stratford Canal are very slow to fill and empty, and the bottom gates are very heavy to operate. I believe that the northern section of the canal was constructed first and the money was running out when the southern section was built, so the single bottom gate was used as a cost-cutting exercise instead of the more usual pair of mitred gates.
Progress was also slow because of the large number of boats on this stretch of canal. Was the Grand Union so quiet because everyone was here?
We had decided to moor at Wootton Wawen, but the visitor moorings were occupied by several boats with 20ft gaps between them, and no sign of the owners so not much chance of asking them to create a space for us. We finally moored just past Wootton Wawen aqueduct in a rather overgrown spot, close to another boat who had also failed to get a space on the mooring rings.
We had bought Indian and Chinese takeaway meals on special offer at Tesco, which Lucy heated up for us. Not exactly cooking, but with complex logistics needed to get the various courses ready at the right time using the small oven and available utensils. We ate it picnic style spread across the towpath, moving for the occasional dog-walker.