Warwick to Birdingbury.

While we were moored at the Cape of Good Hope, Temeraire towing butty Tenacious went by. ‘Traditional Engine Specialists RN’ was painted on the side, nice pair of boats. Plenty of joggers, dog walkers and cyclists pounding the towpath constantly along here. As a consequence the boat got rather dusty!

We descended the two Cape locks with a lovely family of four adults and three teenagers on a hire boat. Then we stopped at the bottom at the water tap and the Bywater Hotel Boat and Butty came down past us. We briefly stopped at Lidl, then on to Leamington Spa to moor.

It is only a short walk into the town which has an interesting mix of grand buildings with a lovely park. The shops are well spread out though and there is a large shopping arcade too. Having sampled the Warwick Wetherspoon’s we popped into the Jug+Jester at Leamington to try their toasted teacakes and coffee. We can report that their food is consistantly good in all their establishments! While we were in their it poured with rain, but the sun came out for us to walk back to the boat.

   

The carved wood ornamentation on the back doors of this boat was different. I liked this seed-head and thought it looked rather like a fire-work! We passed a warehouse selling ‘Elegant Clutter’, I suppose this has become popular because of the lack of antiques nowadays.

We cruised on to moor at Radford Semele to rest up before tackling the 6 locks. We waited for a hire boat to join us with four adults and two teenagers on board. They were so unorganised and were happy to leave the work to us, or so they thought. Anyway we were held up by low water levels for about half an hour so we put our feet up and had coffee while C&RT back pumped some water up the locks. There was a small boat waiting at the Bascote Staircase locks so we graciously let the hire boat go ahead with him, as we had been with them far too long! All the boats moored by the towpath were tilted over at a jaunty angle for a while.

The ten Long Itchington Locks we shared with nb Tess and their delightful little dogs entertained us en-route. Teasel was well named as he had a rough springy coat and was well used to boating. He had to put young Herbie in his place a few times while playfully bounding about up the tow-path.

We had to squeeze through a narrow gap between all the hire boats moored at Birdingbury Wharf. Then we cruised on a little further as we had spotted a wide grassy towpath to spend the weekend while all the hire boats shoot past us.