Thursday 10th August 2006
Warwick - Calcutt (14¾ miles, 22 locks)
We passed down through the last three locks of Hatton and walked into Warwick to have breakfast at the café. We then carried on towards Leamington Spa, stopping at Tesco to buy some more Indian and Chinese takeaway meals to eat in the evening. At the checkout, the woman was in a bad mood which got worse when she couldn't find the picture of the bread-rolls on her bar-code list. She got even more angry when I admitted that I didn't know what type of rolls they were, but in my defence, I don't work for Tesco and haven't completed the bread-roll recognition training course. Then she couldn't find a bar code on a bottle of water. This was serious, and so the supervisor had to be summoned, although he shouted that he was too busy and we'd all have to wait. When he finally arrived, he grilled Jen over where she had got the bottle from as this was from a multipack and couldn't be sold separately. Then he realised that it had come from the chilled cabinet near the shop entrance, and told us off because this was only for people who were going into the café. So we came away feeling like criminals and would like to award the Warwick branch of Tesco 1 out of 10 for customer service, although to be fair, the checkout staff the previous Saturday would have got 8 out of 10.
Setting off again through Leamington Spa, we heard the sound of sirens. We later passed the Fire Brigade rolling up their hoses, presumably having pumped water out of the canal to extinguish a fire.
Then we caught up with another boat travelling on tickover all the time. We followed them for about half a mile before they even noticed we were behind them, after which they sped up and slowly left us behind. We caught them up at Radford Bottom Lock, where a dozen middle-aged women were spilling out of the Saltisford Canal Centre day-hire boat, armed with the picnic they intended to eat at the lockside.
At the next lock we caught up with another boat and shared the locks as far as Bascote Wharf where we stopped to fill with water and have lunch. We completed the remaining locks on our own and carried on up to Calcutt where we winded outside Calcutt Marina and moored just past the Ventnor Farm Marina, facing back towards Stockton. There are some truly massive excavations taking place, both at Calcutt Marina and on the other side of the canal towards Ventnor Farm. It looks as if these will provide hundreds more moorings. Let's hope that everyone doesn't decide to go cruising at the same time, especially with Wigrams Turn and the Napton hire-base so close.