Friday 18 April 2014

Easter Cruise Day 3 and a Wonderful get together.

Total distance:7.26 miles Elapsed time:4h14m32s Locks:6 Bridges:32 
 Average speed:1.71 mph (3.12 lock/mph) 

This morning I was up at 6.30am and left Chris sleeping soundly again.  I don't know why but when I wake up I have to get up when I'm on AmyJo.  I raddled and stoked the log burner into life again to warm up the boat as it still had some life in it.  I then rolled up the cratch cover onto the cratch board to be greeted with the beautiful view and just sat there taking it in.  I guess this is what life afloat should be like. If only one could freeze time for a while. Just a short while.

Our nearest neighbour

without the zoom you can see we hardly bothered them :-)

 Throughout this trip we have had our time lapse camera mounted on a bracket fixed to the horn and recording the whole trip so far.  When time permits we'll get them up on youtube.

This time we were under way a little after 8.15am and had a shorter run today.  We pushed on for a long day over the last two days as we had a destination to reach today.




 This time we had the 5 Fosse locks to go down then a clear run until we got the other side of Lemmington Spar.


The approaches to Leaminton Spa are quite pretty in places






The suburbs appear to have undergone a lot of re-development as numerous new homes abound the canal side. 

This swan was more than happy to nest outside a housing estate

Aqueduct over the river Avon
 The canal is at its lowest point after Radford bottom lock so we had been going down locks all the way to here (thanks Halfie for correcting me, we went down Calcutt locks not up them). 

The shortest Narrowboat we've seen so far

As we had been heading in this direction it would have been rude not to pay some very good friends a surprise visit and so we came upon their home at the Salisford arm.  The entrance is a bit tricky when coming from our direction as its immediately after bridge 51.  The entrance under bridge 51a is low too and we just squeezed under it without taking off the log burner chimney.


Hadar's mooring in the arm is love

As we started to pass by Hadar, Jo yelled at us and looked so pleased to see us. Keith face was a picture too and it was clear they were both happy to see us and totally surprised.

Space is a bit tight in the arm but the winding hole was ample but not big enough for us to moor as the arm managwr asked us to so we had to come back out of the arm and moor online just opposite the arm entrance with Jo arranging to meet us at At AmyJo at 2pm.

We had a wonderful natter and catch up sitting out in the cratch in the warm sunshine and I have to say Keith is looking so much better after his ordeal.  


Its clear the rest in Saltisford and their garden is doing them both the world of good and it was so lovely to see them again. Chris reckons it was 2 years ago since we last saw them.

After a while Keith started to feel tired so Chris gave them a guided tour of AmyJo and then they headed back to Hadar .  Before they left we realised they are our first visitors aboard so that made the trip doubly worthwhile.

After dinner we went for a stroll down the arm to have a nose at Jo and Keith's garden.  Being a sun trap it will look fantastic when its in full bloom.  You must post pictures of that Jo please.


Of course we could not leave without visiting another celebrity in the arm so we dropped in on Bernard the bear.  Pictures do not do him justice.  He is a fantastic peace of work and a credit to his creator Alan Lorenzen.  Jo is watering him twice daily and it looks like he'd root nicely with signs of buds emerging already.


The sensory garden is a delight and one could sit for hours taking in the surrounding plants in the sunshine.  Each pod is home to plants that stimulate a sense, smell, sight, touch and even taste


So after a lovely day meeting good friends our outward journey is now complete.  Tomorrow we retrace our steps back to Crick over the next 3 days and work our way through the throng of boats out for the holiday weekend.

Well that's the blogging done for today so now its scotch o'clock.  nite nite all.

3 comments:

Halfie said...

I'm looking forward to seeing your timelapse. I didn't get round to doing one for this trip - in fact I still have one on a memory card to upload to Youtube. Must do that when I get home!

We must have missed you returning to Crick. We turned left at Norton Junction yesterday (Monday) on our way down the GU.

nb AmyJo said...

Halfie
Oh what a shame, would have been nice to meet up. Are you coming back this way again?

Halfie said...

We hope to be at the Crick boat show after attending a wedding in Sussex on the Saturday; but I'm sure our watery paths will cross by boat some time.