Thursday and Friday blogs

Warwick to Long Itchington

No "3" signal whatsoever last night so no blog yesterday, sorry.

Starting with Thursday, Lin did some more shopping in Tesco for the things we forgot yesterday. She was gone ages, but it always seems that way when you're itching to get on. Well worth the wait though. Pushing on through Warwick, over the aqueducts we spotted a duckling on a floating crisp packet. I bet he'll have a narrow boat of his own when he grows up. Should've taken a picture but we didn't see him 'till it was too late. We didn't stop in Leamington as we want to explore the Ashby Canal and we're already pushed for time having made one detour already, but I still think we can do it.

Our location at Long Itchington

View from our window

Long Itchington to Hillmorton

Friday, and we woke up to a hung parliament. (whoopy doo) Not that we're bothered much, we'll just sit back and watch them fight it out over the next few days. That'll be a laugh.

Thought I'd take a stroll over the aqueduct which spans the River Itchen. The Weedon and Leamington Railway used to wend its way along here and now its a Sustrans cycle path and all the railway track has been removed. Not many bikes use it I'd think, its fairly well overgrown on the far side of the aqueduct.

TQ in the distance

On through Stockton Locks and there was Portugal, a tug in our favourite style. I want one of those please.

Portugal. A lovely tug.

I was surprised to see how big Ventnor Farm Marina is. We were passing it for ages and then there was more of it right up to Calcutt Locks, and Calcutt Boats have a large marina as well.

Calcutt Junction is where we leave the Grand Union and turn left onto the Northern section of the Oxford Canal. This is much different, there are no concrete sides to the cut, just the odd bit of piling and mainly shallow slanting concrete slab sides which make it impossible to moor close to the bank.

Braunston Junction is not far away, we turn left again and the Grand Union continues to the right.

Approaching Braunston Junction

We've done well with the mileage today, just looking at the Pearsons Guide, 16.5 miles is our distance traveled. Currently moored at the Old Royal Oak, a Hungry Horse house, we went in and ordered fish and chips. It was good value at £8 for two. The ale was rubbish though, very cloudy, their excuse was it was a new barrel and needed to settle. They didn't stop selling it, and offered me a cheaper alternative and I didn't receive the difference in cost either. Shan't be going back there again.

Update on TQ, all is going well so far, although the batteries only just come up 12.5 volts after 8 hours engine run and an hours' rest, and after half an hours' TV they drop right back to 11.8 volts under load. I'm switching off the inverter overnight and turning the fridge back to one. This is helping a little, but I would suggest they need drop testing and replacement as necessary.