Wet, wet, wet.

It’ll hardly be news to most of you but it was wet and windy today and, for those who know Brinklow Marina, you’ll know how windy it can get here.  James got on with his indoor jobs and, occasionally the wind rocked the boat so hard he lost the odd screw!  Jobs done we decided to go into Rugby for a few things.  As we left we took this pic. of the waves on the marina…….

….it was slightly worse than this at it’s best.

One highlight of our visit to Rugby was a quick bit of shopping in Tesco.  As we’re short of photos today here’s one of Doug at the checkout….

…… you can’t have pretty canal scenes all the time!  A chance visit to TK MAXX found a superb Ralph Lauren shirt for James which goes well with the £12 pair of jeans just purchased from Tesco!

With time to spare, and the rain easing off, we thought we’d go up to Hillmorton locks and walk Oscar.  Surprisingly today we’ve seen quite a lot of traffic on the water while we’ve been crossing and re-crossing the canal by road.  Arriving at Hillmorton it was cold, wet under foot and pretty quiet.  However, a hire boat was coming down through the locks – they’d not been on a narrow boat before and this was a weekend break and only their fifth lock.  They handled the boat superbly with no bumps or scrapes as they entered the lock.  They were phlegmatic about their first, very damp,  experience on the canal but we felt so sorry that they’d had such a wet weekend for their first venture.  The water levels are as high as they can get at the moment……..

….. so high, in fact, it was going over the lock gates!  Did someone say there was a water shortage!!

Rain or not, we’ve had a good day and now we’re about to enjoy a lovely roast dinner with the water level high enough now to lap against our pontoon.  We plan an early start tomorrow as we’re going back to Sussex for James to have a blood test.  We’ll go via Leicester as we intend to pop in to see our boat builders, MGM, at Thurmaston on the River Soar.  (James needs a couple of screws!!)