Onto Hawkesbury Junction

The Barley Mow won out last night - nice pub, dog friendly, good food and as a bonus they were showing the England football game ... unfortunately I was outvoted by Elaine and my Mother and we had to move to the bar with no tele :(

I nipped down the co-op before we set off as I was making Mother a curry tonight and had to get some goodies.  We were last to leave the moorings as per usual, and had a nice steady motor along the canal, meeting lots of boats coming the other way.

Passed the entrance to Brinklow Marina, Caxton's home port ...


Passed a cow having a paddle ...

Large family of swans ...

Just after passing under the M6 the canal runs very close to the main west coast railway; Mother didn't believe me when I said 'when a train comes past give it a wave and he will give you a blast on his horn'.  The first train to come by was a Virgin Pendolino, doing well over 100mph ... Mother waved frantically and sure enough the driver gave a nice long blast on the two tone horn!  Made her day  and mine of course. Once a train spotter and all that!

M6

We would have had a pic of us nutters waving to the trains but Elaine was busy down below baking ...



Burnt out cabin cruiser ...

Elaine took this pic of Bombo looking down the hatch, such a lovely boy.....

We arrived at Hawkesbury Junction stop lock, which is now guarded by a flying dragon!

 

We dumped the nasties and filled with water at the service area, then moved up the Coventry canal about 100 metres to a nice mooring.

I prepared the curry then Elaine and I went down the Greyhound for a drink with the dogs, - there were nearly more dogs in there than humans! A chap was taking his 2 young sprogs to the toilet he
got a little bit upset at the amount of dogs in the bar - don't really know what his problem was as all the doggies were well behaved!

Back to the boat and the curry, which went down well and made Elaine and Mother go to bed early....