Tuesday 8th August 2006
Stratford-upon-Avon - Rowington (14½ miles, 35 locks)
As in the past, we wanted to avoid the rush out of Stratford, so we set off quietly just after 6am. There was a boat in Bancroft Basin with the same idea, but they were ten minutes behind our schedule.
We stopped at Wilmcote and had breakfast before continuing our journey. After the Edstone aqueduct, we reached Odd Lock and caught up with a rather slow boat who fortunately decided to stop at Wootton Wawen. Later we caught up with a boat that seemed to be travelling at less than 1mph. I could only use short bursts of tickover and drift the rest of the time since Hawksmoor was incapable of travelling so slowly. The canal was too narrow and winding to overtake and the people on the other boat were oblivious to our presence - or pretending to be.
We found out later that it was a trip boat for people with learning disabilities. I called them mentally handicapped, and Jen told me off for not being politically correct. Why is the charity still called Mencap when they should have changed their name to Leardis?
By the time we reached the next lock we had a large queue of boats behind us and I was praying the the trip boat would be using the winding hole, which of course they didn't. Fortunately, their other crew member was pretty efficient at working through the locks and the slow speed in the quarter mile pounds between locks became almost insignificant. They finally stopped at Lowsonford and we continued up towards Kingswood Junction.
At Kingswood, we turned back down the Grand Union towards Warwick and found a peaceful mooring at Rowington Embankment.