Thursday was a chill in Stratford-Upon-Avon day to recover, a quick walk around town and generally relax before hitting the river Friday. Some interesting buildings and a lot of Shakespeare history along i’ll be the fist to admit that’s not really my thing but I like the buildings.
Built in 1485, now a doggy day spa! 
Excuse the covid measure barriers 
Kenneth Williams Door 
Woohoo my anxiety is back. After watching all the floods etc earlier this year, rivers make me nervous. You can’t moor where you like so you’re always hoping there is space in your chosen destination. Cue Kate making a plan A,B & C for mooring options. There is a green, amber, red warning notice to let you know what state the river is in and as you would think, if it’s red, don’t even try. I think the main nerves come from not knowing how fast the river is flowing naturally and how easy finding a mooring is. Plus the locks are now bigger and more folk watching your every move. We moved our anchor to the back to be ready to deploy if needed and made our final engine checks.
Best thing when i’m anxious is just to get going, sitting, waiting around just makes in worse. So seeing a boat coming up the lock onto the Avon we seized the chance and set off.
The boat handling is slightly different in the bigger locks but all made sense and soon found a rhythm.
For the first half of todays journey it was just us which was great. We were both enjoying taking our time and gazing at the monstrous houses that line the river.
We soon found a few boats going in the same direction. A day hire narrowboat from downstream in Bidford and a couple of yoghurt pots heading down that way too. We had decided that after enough people in Stratford yesterday that we would stop short of Bidford on a quiet field based mooring. Got a bit nervous as it seemed wasps had taken residence in the piling in the next lock, the boat was swarming with them but luckily no stings and we steered safely out of their new home!
On the canal, the water is so murky you can’t see through it so you have to rely on how the boat behaves in order to figure our how much water you have beneath you. On the river, the water is clearer so you can see, think I prefer not knowing and something it looks pretty shallow!
The weir next to the lock mooring 
Our neighbour for the night taking a wild swim – i was a bit jealous!
All in all a much more relaxing day and after 5 hours we were able to relax early and open a nice bottle of red to go with the lasagne we made.
Todays video can be found here: https://youtu.be/krEZbR6pLh8
That Niggling Thought 
Great post Kate. What a great way to finish the day, with lasagne and red wine on the boat: bliss!
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