Wednesday 17th August

I was awake about 7am and we finally got away about 8.30am. We had 24 locks ahead of us – the first of which had about a quarter of a mile between each one which isn’t long enough to do anything except wait for it to appear. We had two more aquaducts but one of them was only about 12 feet long. A lot of the old lock keepers cottages are barrel-roofed and they are a unique feature of the southern part of the canal. It is unclear why these houses were built in this way but one suggestion is that the men who built the canal were so accustomed to building arched bridges and tunnels they did the same with the houses. Another feature of this part of the canal are split bridges – there is a gap in the middle where the tow rope of the old boats would have gone through. I ate my lunch as we were going through a lock which had some geese sitting on the side – they seemed extremely interested in my roll! At another lock there were three ducks on the lock side and I gave them some rather stale bread. I couldn’t break it up into very small pieces and one of them tried to pull a piece out of another’s beak – it was a real tug of war, I’ve never seen anything like it before! After lock 22 we arrived at Lapworth Junction where there is an arm which connects the Stratford Canal to the Grand Union - we passed the other end on July 22nd – the basin is quite big which is just as well as there were quite a few boats manoeuvering around. There were just six more locks before we knew there was a mooring place where we could stop for the night. The one thing that had kept us going all day was the thought of dinner out! Close by the moorings is a pub called The Boot at Lapworth and we can all highly recommend it. It wasn’t cheap but the food and service was excellent – definitely worth a visit.