Bye bye beer festival

Sunday 1 may 2011
Another sunny day and quite warm on the canal where we were sheltered from the brisk wind. We walked into the village to visit the car boot sale, not over exciting and we didn’t stay long. The next stop was The Buck and Bell who were running a BBQ serving some very tasty meals in rolls at a fiver a time, cooked by the restaurant chef while you waited. I had chicken and bacon with salad all served in a roll while Diana had steak with the salad in a roll, washed down with a couple of halves of bitter. We then wandered around a bit before going to The Green Man as they had a folk group playing in the afternoon. Can anyone tell me why people visit the room in a bar that has people performing with no amplification and then insist on talking to each other on loud voices to get over the music.

The farmhouse behind the church has changed hands in the passed year and they also own most of the fields between the village and the canal and also on the offside, he has had these all planted with trees so there should be some new woodland in a few years time.

We headed back to the boat and had a coffee with Andy who was now moored directly behind us before setting off at ten to four. The first stop was just through bridge 27 to fill the water tank, this is a very good tap with a very good flow but needs treating with care as the local bees use it as their watering hole.

We turned the bend just before the Bascote Staircase just in time to see a boat going down, by the time we arrived at the lock they had just gone into the bottom chamber and closed the interconnecting gates. As I dropped Diana off to refill the top chamber I noticed that the bottom paddle was still a few inches up. Diana went to close it which lead to lots of shouting from the boat below as they thought Diana was actually drawing it. We caught the other boat up just after the entered the next lock and shared the next couple with them. Chatting to them it turned out to be mum and dad, daughter and son-in-law and they had only just got the boat which they moor at Calcutt, the boat didn’t have any bedding and they were only meant to be out for the day, but now needed to go to Radford Bottom to wind. It should be an interesting night for them.

We pulled over for the night just below Welsh Road Lock to moor for the night, we were just tying up when a young couple stopped on bikes and ask if I could help as his pedal kept falling off, a 14mm socket spanner soon sorted it out for him.