Mike Stevens' UK Inland Waterways Pages

TRIP REPORTS : THE YEARS BETWEEN BOATS

BIRMINGHAM & SHARPNESS

August 1987

Part 4: Stratford-on-Avon to Napton

We saw a notice suggesting that Stratford Marina sells canal licenses, so Wendy went to see and found they only sold Avon licences. A very charming man there who didn't mind a customer at 07:20 causing him to start filling in a form then discovering he didn't have the one we wanted. And he had very proper anti-speciesist views about anglers.

We started off at 07:58, locked up into Bancroft Basin and joined the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal. Once we were out of the town, this canal was quite lovely, but shallow in parts - both as we remembered. Breakfast was taken on the move. There was one particular moment of great contentment on a lockside; bids singing, flowers being decorative, sun shining, butterflies and damsel flies in evidence; all this and Ian's scrambled egg too! We took on water at Lowsonford. Wendy renewed acquaintance with Pete Chamberlain (the lengthsman who had been so helpful to us in 1978 when our old boat proved too fat for some of the locks) in his Land Rover somewhere above lock 44. He hadn't aged, was still enjoying it all and remembered our eventful trip here in Felis Catus. Indeed I could have written exactly the same sentence about him when we last visited the Stratford, in 1996. Since then he has retired.

At Lapworth we went through the branch to Kingswood junction and turned south on the Grand Union Canal (Warwick & Birmingham Canal section) A passing boater said there was no room at Shrewley so we stopped briefly while we decided not to believe them. We were right, and we moored in our usual spot just past Shrewley tunnel at 19:16.

It was a hot, sunny day. We aimed to get through Hatton before it got too hot or full of gongoozlers, so started at 06:58. We succeeded as far as concerned an audience. Ian lock-wheeled with great efficiency, despite being wounded in the course of duty. We kept going all day, across the Avon valley and up the locks the other side, stopping at Calcutt boats for a pump-out & to buy diesel.

It was still a very hot day with many anglers and, by the afternoon, lock-side sun-bathers. We passed Napton junction, heading towards Braunston and made an early stop at 17:42 because we were all tired after a heavy day of locks and heat, and weren't confident of finding a decent mooring any nearer to Braunston. We moored to a very pretty floral bank, but every passing boat seemed to pull out our mooring pins. Eventually Peter and Wendy found some holes for them between the metal & stone of the piling, so we felt secure.