We’ve started our main summer cruise and I’ve just realised that the last blog post was at Easter, whoops! Well we haven’t given up on boating, it’s just me being lazy. Since Easter we have been out and about on the Ashby more weekends than not, stopping in all the usual haunts. We’ve had a few trips to the Greyhound at Hawkesbury and in June we took a week to go to Alvecote and back, all exciting stuff! The calorifier sprung a leak and had to be replaced ~ more expense. The cratch board got a make over with a cream paint job to replace the varnished wood which was showing its age. The dark staining could have been bleached before being re-varnished but we decided to brighten it up instead. Other than that, Caxton now has a new, improved mobile broadband system on board.

So that’s the summary, now for the summer cruise. We’ve taken to mooring Caxton close to where we live so that loading is a bit easier than carting stuff to the marina. In fact, we’ve also taken to spending more and more nights on board when moored here, just thirty yards from the front door of our home. Anyway, yesterday morning before work, I walked to the marina, untied and moved Caxton the quarter mile or so to “our” mooring space. (As far as I’m concerned, it became ours when I cut the grass there!). Through Thursday and then Friday morning, we made our final preparations before setting off just after one o’clock. Until Thursday evening we had no plans at all, preferring to just wander aimlessly but after some discussion we have decided to head for Birmingham and then down to Warwick by way of the Stratford canal. There are a lot of locks on the western side of the Warwickshire ring but we have seventeen days to complete the journey so it should be alright.

We had a pleasant cruise through the afternoon to our mooring for the night near Springwood Haven, just north of Nuneaton. Along the way we passed Martin and Caroline on their new narrowboat, Sonia Louise, as they headed north on the Ashby. We visited them a couple of weeks ago and were given the full tour of their magnificent boat which has been built to a very high standard.

Tomorrow, we’ll move on to Atherstone and down the Atherstone flight on the next leg of our journey, where we stop is anyone’s guess. You’ll have to read the next episode to find out.