The GRAND Union Canal!!

Just below Bascote Locks on the Grand Union Canal is a mooring suitable for a 70 footer. There is no room nearby for anyone else so if you want to be alone and go back to nature that is the mooring for you! Luckily, when we got here it was empty so tonight it is ours. There is nothing else here, apart from the various birds, the occasional biplane flying over, and the farmer checking out his sheep on a quad.

Also, bearing in mind this is the GRAND UNION, where are the boats? We were going down the locks, the Calcutt 3, the Stockton 9 and the Long Itchington 2, we met up with a lovely couple on a boat at Calcutt and shared 13 locks with them. They were from New Zealand , they live in New Zealand and come over here every year for five months of our summer to cruise the canals. They moor over winter at Crick when they go home for their summer. What a life!! I am trying to remember the name of their boat, it is named after a pure white heron from New Zealand and was something like WOTUKU, apologies if I got it wrong.

We were the only two boats going down the locks, we started at Calcutt about 1030 and are now moored below Bascote Locks, the time being almost 2100 hrs and nothing else has come down the flight! As to those going up, we could count them on two hands, BUT, our progress was slowed by the increasing number of moored boats. On the approach to Stockton there are so many moored boats that progress was severely limited. It seems as though most of them go nowhere, I don't know whether the adjacent road and ample parking had anything to do with this!!

I know that BW say that more and more boats are being licensed each year, BUT, how many of them have a recognised mooring and how many of them actually cruise the canals!! I know there are numerous genuine continuous cruisers and I follow their blogs on a daily basis, but so many others are taking the **** and BW seem to be doing absolutely nothing about them. It seems to be that if you are licensed and have a recognised mooring that you pay for, BW check you out but if you have neither, nobody bothers about you!

Enough doom and gloom, tomorrow we will be at Warwick and my son and his mates take over the boat,. Good luck to all that meet them!