The Aftermath!

Tuesday May 30th @ 22:40

As planned we moved off from Lowsonford at around 11am (Sunday) and progressed further South taking on water at Lowsonford Bridge.
Being school halfterm and Bank Holiday the canal was busy with holiday boats which only added to the termoil. As mentioned in earlier posts the River Avon remains closed so boats are now starting to back up. The news filtering down is that Stratford Basin is currently full!
We continued down and through Preston Bagot after completing 8 locks and managed to secure the one and only mooring available at Wooton Wawen at around 2pm.
Monday we decided to bike to Stratford to check out the situation for ourselves. Well that is to say we cycled to Wooton station and took a 10 minute journey by train into Stratford. After lunch at one of my old pubs (The Windmill) we checked out the basin which was indeed full. More so the backlog extended quite a distance back.
This morning (Tuesday) we progressed on to Stratford and so set off at around 10.30am. The Avon has finally receeded and re-opened but judging by the amount of traffic moving North it was still extremely busy! We continued our decent towards Stratford crossing the Edstone Aquaduct a half hour later. This aquaduct is around 200yds in lenth and is a narrow cast iron trough carried on brick piers across a shallow valley. Passing through Wilmcote where we moored last year and on past the famous Mary Ardens House we decended the 11 Wilmcote locks in good time and decided to moor just short of Stratford at bridge 62A, which turned out to be a good strategy. In the late afternoon we cycled into Stratford for a look and found the basin still full! The plan now is to set off early tomorrow (Wednesday) and try and secure a mooring on the Avon hopefully vacated by an early leaver. We shall see!!!