Off On the Oxford.

 Well, we are off again, and reporting a day later. We drove down on Tuesday and had a slight detour as when we were crawling along over the M62 Ouse Bridge the warning light for a low pressure tyre came on. We pulled off and went to the 'famous' Glews Garage. Glews garage is unrecognisable today to what it was when all traffic had to cross the Ouse over Boothferry Bridge. Funny that! We went to check the tyre pressures but the air pump wasn't working so we drove in to Kwik Fit Goole. They were great and fitted us in despite being belly to ground. They checked round and could find nothing amiss. Blew everything up to the right pressures and reset the alarm and charged us nothing. Luckly Helen had been over the road and bought a load of doughnuts as a thank you.

Once everything was transferred from the car an d the getting everything ready we were away and heading to Calcutt locks. As we approached we could see a boat just leaving but they were closing the gates. I tooted and indicated that they should leave them open. It took a while but they did so. It turns out they had picked the boat up at Napton and it was their first three locks. Four Americans loose on the canals. I hope that somebody tells them that they should drop the paddles when they leave a lock. There was a boat coming down the next lock and started filling. I could see that the bottom paddles were up but they were oblivious. Helen went up and dropped them for them. They were new continuous cruisers it seems.

We were soon at the junction and turned left. We didn't go too far before we found a spot and tied up for the night.

It had been a lovely late cruise, but at 6 in the morning a realised that I hadn't positioned the solar panels for the morning sun. As I need to pump ballast anyway I got up and did both jobs and took a couple of photos too.

The first looking for'd and the second looking aft. Lovely light.

QWe were alittle late setting off as I did a few little jobs, but it was a great day again. This big house can be found between bridges 101 and 102 on the Oxford, but Helen tells me that you can't see it on Google Earth. I suspect that you have to be seriously rich to have it scratched off that. I wonder who lives in a house like this?

This section of the Oxford Canal is shared with the Grand Union from Braunston Junction to Napton Junction and so it was partly up graded for wide beam boats. There are stretchers of concrete edge just like that on the Warwick stretch. Every now and then are these 'signs' imprinted in the concrete. The arrows indicate where the message is relevant. It then tells you how deep the bank piles have been driven 7ft 3" in this case and then, to avoid the side being undermined by dredging, states that  any dredging should only be undertaken to a depth of  4ft 6". It is great that the date has also been added, 1933. I'm not sure why it was needed but it is history. They must have started at Braunston as towards Napton the year is 1934!

It always seems to take longer than you think to get between Napton and Braunston. So many boats moored and permanent moorings. But eventually we get to see the rocket ship that is All Saints Church at Braunston along with its booster rocket that is the old mill.

Willoughby Wharf was looking good in the sun. In 1857 they were selling Scotch potatoes for £3 a ton. You could receive a sample of one peck on the receipt of 24 postage stamps. I still remember having to send stamps sometimes. I'm sure that you will remember that a peck was equivalent to 2 dry gallons, and that four pecks make a bushel. Things moved on and in 1962 they were hiring out canoes!

The fields were full of sheep. There were lambs from this size to much larger

I don't remember ever seeing this fortification before. It is above Barby Wood Farm and close by Dunchurch Pools Marina. It is actually an underground covered storage reservoir to supply Rugby. The water is pumped up from Draycote Water and so provides a head to create pressure in the taps at Rugby.  Dunchurch Pool Marina has two prisons next to it, not one but two. The first was HMP Onley that was built in 1968 and housed young offenders and the like, but now is for Category C adults. Next to it is HMP Rye Hill. This was privately built in 2014 and has always housed Category B, sexual assault, offenders.

All along the offside of this part of the canal the bushes and trees have been grubbed up and deposited in the field. This isn't recent, and whilst it gives good open views, I don't understand why they would have done it, and just left it there. I wondered whether it was to give access to the cattle, but this doesn't seem very likely. I would have thought that the tree and shrub roots would have stabilised the bank to stop erosion. I wondered if it had been done in readiness to pile the very long length, but it just hasn't got done yet!

I spotted a line of old Oxford Canal Co. concrete posts on the towpath side that are weathering nicely.

The Barby Straightis just that, straight and when you get past it you are soon at Tarry's Bridge and an old wharf there. The buildings on the left are converted stables that have rooms rented out to traders people by the week. There is always something interesting to look at here with lots of odds and sods around the place. On the right was the old Fox Inn.

I spotted these lovely carnations on the offside just near the Hillmorton top lock. Couldn't see the inscription in full but I was left wondering whether it was a cat called Kat, or a female personage.

One lock ahead of us was a single hander but we didn't catch him up. There was nobody coming up and as usual the volunteer lock keepers were at the bottom lock. There was nobody on the water point so we stopped and topped up before heading off again, for Rugby.

The old Clifton Wharf spanned from this warehouse near to the road bridge 66 to a railway line that crossed the canal round the corner. It was a branch of the London and North Western Railway that left Rugby station and headed to Peterborough. This is just before the mooring arm that was originally one of the cut off loops of the original contour canal.

We moored up just before the park close to Tescos and went shopping after a cup of tea to get some stuff that we needed, plus a bit of salad from Tesco's. You can tell it is warm if we are eating salad, especially as only the tomatoes were from the UK. Rather than the phrase 'Make hay when the sunshines', I am going to amend it to 'East salad when the sun shines'.

Make and Mend.

 Well we arrived at Calcutt Marina yesterday, and moored where we had been told to. I later went up to the office to check in and they asked if we could move to the other side and stern to the quay. As I got back to the boat and roused Helen out to assist a young lad rocked up to move the boat for us. I was very polite in telling him that we were quite capable of moving the boat ourselves. It was accomplished with no hassle, and quickly as it was raining!

This morning Dave (I think it was) arrived and surveyed the job before heading off to get the required tools etc. The main job we had was to sort the Hurricane heater out as we had a series air lock I thought and I hadn't been able to shift it. The coolant needed changing too so they could do that at the same time.

However he decided to do the second job first that was to change the coolant in the Kubota/Beta engine. There is a drain on the st'bd side of the engine, but he decided to remove the hose that went into the skin tank and drain it all into the bilges. I thought that this would not be very good, but in the end it worked well, as we don't have a painted bilge, and the coolant mixture did a good job of 'cleaning' the base plate. Once finished he used a wet vac. to suck it all up and brought all the rubbish with it and the engine hole locks as clean as it has been for a good while.

Then it was the turn of the Hurricane. I really think these are a great bit of kit for heating and hot water. They only need servicing every 1,000 hours and they just work. However this time aboard when we put it on it cut out and the expansion tanks overflowed. After poking about with it and doing what I do didn't work I contacted Calcutt who are the main distributors of these Canadian devices. It was also well beyond time for changing the coolant so that was to do at the same time.

Dave's method was to open the bleed valve at the furthest radiator and and drain the fluid out whilst keeping the header tank topped up. As you can imagine as the eye in the bleed valve is very small this took a long time. I could do this myself so Dave went off to do other jobs, just popping back every now and then. Once the water coming out of the radiator was running blue, as the new additive, we concluded that we had drained all the old stuff out and replaced with new.

It was then time to turn it on and see what happened. It ran for a while and then had a flame out. It seemed that there was still an airlock in the system. Dave got down and took the little plate off the top. It seems that there was a reset button in there and once that was sorted it ran okay.... for a while. It then cut out again and I just caught it before it all came out of the header tank again. We still had an air lock.

The last time that Dave had worked on the system it was for a slightly cracked fuel deliver valve casing that leaked fuel, but was invisible unless looking right at it with the system running. Once that was sorted he installed bleed valves on the inlet and outlet feeds to the unit. He bled these and we were away. I left the boiler going for ages and go everything really hot and checked all the radiators hot. I frequently checked the header tank to see how high it got. Just over half way at full heat. I later checked it after the system had cooled right down and it was just below half way. Dave thought that there had been a bit of water lost from the system so when it started up it sucked air into the system. Lets hope it was sorted out.

I went to pay the tab just before 17:00 and got ready to leave Calcutt for the long journey to our marina berth. We set off just as two boats had come down from the bottom of the Calcutt locks. The ind was blowing us towards the entrance to the cut so there wasn't much I could do until we were at the entrance. Eventually the hire boat realised the problem and cracked on. However at the entrance to our marina about 100 yards away a boat was winding and that meant more waiting about, fortunately the trees meant that the wind wasn't nearly so bad on the cut. We eventually got back on our berth stern too.

We will have to go for fuel in the morning before heading home after a lovely trip out.

We went to the Crown Inn at Stockton and had a lovely meal for our last supper.

Concrete Evidence of Lime and Cement.

 As rain was due by lunch time we went to bed with every intention of getting up and off earlier than usual. However with a cup of tea in bed listening to the radio and then a phone call we were even later than normal, but only by about 20 minutes. The long line of boats had been whittled down and every one was pointing the wrong way for a hope of sharing with us.

On the way to the locks I noticed this concrete fence. I don't think I have seen one imprinted with TRESPASSING PROHIBITED before. The fence must have been erected at the same time as the locks and banks were altered for the 100 ton barges as it is the in vogue concrete used then. Reading on a bit the Hatton Locks were opened by Prince George, Duke of Kent on Tuesday 30th October 1934 when he cut the silk ribbon. He was still saying that the plan was to allow passage of 100 ton barges from London to Birmingham. So I'm not sure when they gave up on the dream. I think they had a route that could take vessels of a beam up to 12' 6", but never changed all the bridges etc to take the planned for 14'3".

By the time we got close to the bottom, or Itchington Lock we could see that there was a boat going up on their own. They had left before we could chat with them, but they didn't seem to be speeding along so we hoped that we would catch them up by the next, Shop Lock. This was the lock cottage at the lock with a date given as 1799, which would fit in to the opening of the original narrow Warwick and Napton Canal.

The Kayes Arm was quite extensive in its day.

This 1885 map extract show the main canal across the top and the arm leading south to the Long Itchington Cement and Lime works, with the Stockton Reservoir of the Warwick and Napton Canal Co. Leading away from the factory to the south is a mini railway that must have brought the rock from the quarry.

Just east of the Kayes Arm and leading off the towpath side was another 'arm'. This one had no towpath indicated and led to no factory or farm. In the photo above, by the willows to the left you can see where the canal widens a little seemingly to assist boats leaving this 'arm'.

This is the same 1885 OS map with the arm heading north. It is not a feeder as there is no stream or anything coming in at its top end, and appears to be only one boat wide if intended to be used

The hire boat had waited for us so we did the rest of the flight with them.

The were two couples of friends who had hired before. The girls were driving today and they were very nervous about it all. Husbands were on the shore and they appeared to be hesitant about what to do there too.

By the time we did the second lock together they had gamely agreed to enter the next lock together and Annie (In Black) did brilliantly for a couple of locks. We met a pair of boats coming down so we let them come through the middle of us before entering separately.

The Stockton Locks must have been a hive of industry, literally,  as by Locks 9, 10 and 11 was the largest cement and lime works. You can see that this works was linked with the Weedon and Leamington Railway as well as the canal wharves. It looks like there are at least 15 lime kilns fed by narrow gauge railway from the nearby quarry and the lines also pass between the buildings too.

By the time we got to the top lock Debbie had done a couple of locks with us entering as a pair too. They were well impressed with themselves, and so they should have been. They were fed up with the men folk telling them how to do it. I gave them a few other tips and hoped that they have gained a bit of confidence and carry on and hang on to the tiller a bit more.

Nelson Wharf used to be busy with training boats and courses but now seems to have resident boats down the arm that has been partially dug out and had 'Podtastic' glamping pods. This was actually the site of the largest cement works of the area.

The arm can be seen here with 34 lime kilns! Again there is a narrow railway from the quarry but isn't connected to the railway system as the railway was only built between 1888 and 1895. This is the line that ran through Braunston too. It is interesting to see there is a winding hole,(or maybe even a wharf) next to Gibraltar Bridge to the right of the extract. That isn't there now. I wonder if the concrete used for all the works to widen the locks and reinforce the banks used cement from these works as they were still working in the 1930's?

It started to rain lightly as we left the top lock so no more photos. Our lock partners stopped for a coffee and we went onwards. We were booked in to Calcutt Marina for some work, hopefully tomorrow and they had said we could drop in this afternoon to get settled ready for tomorrow. We threaded our way in and swung round to where they sent us and have the afternoon off!

Half Day Holiday.

 It was a dreary morning with off and on rain so we decided to stay put until it got a little better. It was forecast to fair up around 12:30 and so it turned out. Mind you it was still quite blustery. We did a few tidy up and clean jobs so I was glad to get moving after a bite to eat.

There were quite a few bluebells out on the offside between our mooring and Wood Lock. There are so many wild flowers out that they must be appreciating the damp and warm conditions. I think we could do with a break from the damp no though!

In the wind it was pretty cold. I had it okay as the wind was from astern, especially for the first few locks, but Helen had to look right into it here is nobody who has taken on the care of Wood Lock. It must be a bit from a road too, or a van would have been round with painters etc.

Not far from the lock was the site of the HS2 works. There were a workers about and this machine looked as though it was boring larger hole for big piles.

The Bascote Locks are next, after Welsh Road Lock that is. As we approached the staircase pair a couple of hire boats arrived at the top. We carried on up without trying to drop them down and swap with one of them in the middle etc. as it seemed they were having enough trouble to get alongside!

In 1933 it was a very hot summer and drought was a very real possibility for the village of Harbury, not far from the Bascote Locks. The village wells had dried up and there was real worry about not being able to find an alternative source. A reporter who heard about the thirst of the villager had recently been to the works at Welsh Road and Bascote Locks to build the wide beam locks and was aware that one of the problems they were having that excavations had uncovered a spring that was issuing lots of water. It was then thought that this could be easily piped to the villager. Investigation found that the water extremely hard and when the cost of softening to drinking quality was taken into account it was too expensive. I wonder where they got their water  from in the end, and what did the engineers do with the spring water?

There two or three C&RT vans at the top of the locks but when they saw Helen coming towards them they quickly packed up and were off. The lock was empty so she was just opening the gate of the staircase pair so I could go straight in.

Last lock of the day, but we did stop at Bascote Wharf to top up with water.

I think I mentioned when we did the Hatton flight that to fully wind the Ham Baker lock gear takes between 22 and 25 turns of the windlass, when really the sluice is fully open after 18 turns. I have worked out that if all the locks are against you and you have to raise and lower one paddle at each end of the 21 locks and only turn the windlass 18 times instead of, say 24 times, thus saving 6 revolutions that would save 252 turns, and that is the same as winding 14 paddles, or the effort in working 7 locks. Worth thinking about.

There was a long line of boats seemingly stretching all the way to the way to the Two Boats and Cuttle Bridge. I'm sure there would be gaps but we just stopped before the River Itchen aqueduct.

The sun came out once we were moored up and I had a few more little jobs to occupy myself before getting down to writing the blog.

Stiff Neck in Leamington.

We were having a day out in Leamington so we didn't rush about this morning and were away at 10:45. As always I spent my time looking upwards, so apologies from me.

On the way into town on Bath Street there is this building, originally called the Parthenon. It was built in 1821 as a Royal Music Hall/Civic Centre. It later became a dance hall and a music Hall venue. By 1873 it was a reference library. There was a fire in the building in the 1960's and the facade was restored following this. It is now Iceland.

This was built between 1816 and 1836 as a house on the main street of Old Leamington. The ground floor was converted to shops before 1905.

We walked through Jephson Park and Gardens which are always beautifully kept. We took a turn through the glass house and there were a few of these bananas flowers.

A Typical Burton's, The Tailor of Taste buildings. He started building his stores in 1923 but this looks like it was from the 1930's with it's Art Deco style. All his premises were distinguished and many of them had a billiard hall upstairs as this would bring other revenue in when closed.

Mosaics on Leamington Town Hall. The top one is at the front and the lower, which looks like Justice with blindfold, sword and scales is at the side which was likely to be the entrance to the courts of old.

The Regent Hotel is now a Travel Lodge but when it was opened in 1819 it was called William's Hotel. Three weeks later the name was changed to Regent with permission of The Prince Regent, the future George IV. In 1830 Queen Victoria stayed here with her dad aged 11. The future Queen stayed in a Travel Lodge!

Brian from NB Harser (see his blog here https://nbharnser.blogspot.com/)  told me about a website about ghosts signs after I posted one yesterday, see below, I seems to have seen a few more today. I will have to add them to the data base. This one says Prior (the shop name?) and I think towards the bottom something like special and note....

 https://historicengland.org.uk/whats-new/features/ghost-signs/

This was to the left of an upstairs window with the lower picture to the right. This one says W. Bradley Basket Manufacturer

This one says Bradley's Brush Warehouse. I can find J. Bradley with a business of baskets and brushes here starting in 1896. Later a W. Bradley was running the business. The last I see of them is 1911!

This is Birmingham House on Regent Street. It may have been built in the 1820's. I can find a Lees Domestic Agency based there in 1894.

This is by the bridge over the river next to the Royal Pump House, and is where you can get a free drink of the spa water.

On Spencer Street on the way back to the boat is this lovely Art Deco place the Bath Assembly Hall, built in 1926. It was a Palais de Danse designed by Birmingham Architect Horace Bradley. It regularly had 200 around its sprung floor and under a mirror ball.

Once back at the boat we had a cup of tea and then decided to make some ground towards base and set off.

More photos of the Leamington Mural Festival of 2022.

There is quite a theme about birds spying on us.

And this is the story behind it.

We did four locks, dropped the rubbish off at the first and filled with water at the third and moored up in the middle of nowhere after the fourth not sure what we will do about the weather tomorrow, but may involve getting wet.