After those beautiful clear skies last night, there was a lot of frost and patches of ice on the cut this morning.
Coming up to the top of the Hatton flight with the ice creaking and cracking as we break through.
Looming down the flight, there was no ice in the next pound, the sun was out and the sky was blue.
The paddle gears are different, hard work to wind, but the locks fill and empty quickly. In fact we only opened one and went on ahead to prepare the next, the timing worked just right and it saved walking across frosty lock gates too.
A bit of canal art in a side pond on the way down.
It was such a lovely morning to be out working locks.
Looking back up, glad they're behind us, now it's time to swap my windlass for the tiller.
There is still plenty of fruit on the trees for the birds, crab apples, sloes, and haws.
crab apples
haws
I thought these looked pretty on the ground.
At the bottom of the 21 we sauntered along the Saltersford Branch, but there were no visitor moorings free, so we came back to the main line and through another 2 locks and are moored opposite Kate boats, Warwick.
4 miles, 23 locks
We always do one gate one paddle on those big locks if we're on our own. And when you start going back up again, if you use the paddle on the same side as the boat, it keeps the boat to the side.
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