Wendy quite liked the idea of going to Birmingham, though I do feel it was more to do with the 21 locks we are going to hit early on when we get on the grand union canal. You can see above we are at the junction between the Stratford canal and the grand union and we are staying here on the Saturday as it sounds like it will be way too hot to do any sailing! We spoke to a number of people and weighed up our options and in the end we decided to do the locks and avoid Birmingham for the time being.
We will set off on Sunday and moor before we hit the upper lock. After that we have 21 deep, double width locks which is going to take around 6 hours to navigate! Luckily there are pubs at the bottom where we can get refreshed and we also will be in Warwick, which has lots of shops and stuff for us to recharge with – it’s amazing the effect some retail therapy has on Wendy.
Going up the canal, stopping at Wilmcote and Wootton Wawen, then going right on Grand Union.
We made it to Stratford-upon-Avon! The river was lovely in places but at times it was a bit of a pain. Getting stuck at Evesham and Bideford as we did slowed things down quite a bit. Stratford-upon-Avon is really lovely. It has a unique feel all of its own, unlike many other towns which all seem to be the same as each other these days. Stratford has loads of character and the recreation grounds alongside the river are stunning. Anyway, that is the end of the river for us and it’s onto the canal network! We are on the Stratford canal, but not for very long until we turn onto the grand union. We still need to get the loo fixed, which we are planning to do at Wilmcote where we will pick the part up from the post office there.
As we travel along the different rivers and canals I will add a section to the menu here on the home page for each of them. At the moment we are on the Avon, so click on the Avon menu item or hover over it to see all the pages showing our progression along the river. I have been a little lax at getting these updated lately as we have had some technical issues recently – but we are mostly back up and running and raring to go!
So today I travelled over to Wootton Bassett and parked the car in Dee’s space at her flat and then travelled back to the mooring by Bus, Train and Cab. So that’s it now, no more car – whatever we need we will have to get from the canal side. It’s a bit daunting to be honest as its amazing how often you use the car to get bits and bobs during the week, and now the only mode of transport we have are legs!
The train journey was trouble free and everything was on time and I got a seat each time, so no complaints.
So, Monday is when the adventure really begins, we will be sailing up the river to Stratford upon Avon where we will pick up the canal network and the adventure really begins. To be honest I am not keen on the river as the places where you can stop and rest are few and far between, once you get on the cut (as the canal network is known) there are many more places to stop and take a look around. We are hoping to spend a bit of time looking around Stratford-upon-avon as we have heard good things about it.
My plan is to break our journey into seperate pages, one page for each canal or river we travel along. We are attempting to avoid the rivers, so hopefully it will just be the canals we get to blog about!
So, watch out for out ‘Avon Adventure’ which will take us from where we are now (Strensham Mill) all the way to Stratford-upon-avon with 3-4 stops along the way (I hope).
Connor and I playing Golf
Before we set off on Monday I wanted to have a game of golf with Connor, so I set out early in the morning with Wendy and Honey and we collected Connor and left Wendy at Connor’s to chill out and watch telly. As you can imaging Connor’s place was a little messy – so Wendy spent the morning tidying up! Anyway, Connor and I had a great 9 holes which we both really enjoyed and Connor hit some awesome shots too – which was not expected and we have no idea why it happened – but it definately made the experience even better! You’ll notice that I am currently sporting some designer stubble – this is the embroyonic beard that I am attempting to grow.
Oh, and finally I got my fathers day present early this year as we won’t be around on the day. We got an umbrella and a stand which I tried out last Thursday and it works great!
After several trips between the house and the storage unit we finally got our entire house contents moved over. Some items where a real pain to get throught the doors but it mostly went ok, You can see here behind Dee the room was quite crammed. You can also tell that Dee was very happy about getting it all moved over!
Artful Dodger 