We had quite the sleep in today and didn’t arise until 9.00am. After a breakfast of ourScottish porridge, which we are heartily enjoying on these cool mornings, we walked into the town of Long Itchington. With a name like that we thought it warranted a visit.
We walked back along the towpath and then took a right at the Two Boats pub and headed towards the centre of town. After wandering around a little while amongst the nicely presented homes we decided that there wasn’t any real town centre apart from The Green which was the local park with the obligatory duck pond. Altogether we saw six of the eight pubs that the town is reputed to have!!!!
Back to the cut and very fortunately we hooked up with some people on a hire boat who had lots of young lock slaves to do the Stockton Locks that consisted of eight double locks. It took us only and hour which was quite the record. Lovely bunch of people on the boat which consisted of three generations who were out for the week.
We can now make and state our observation regarding owner boaters versus hire boaters. We had a perfect example of the snobbery of owner boaters when we were doing the locks. Of course everyone thinks we own the Ange De L’Eau so put us into the category of owner boaters whereas we classify ourselves quite differently. As we came out of the locks an owner boater was coming towards us and he pointedly greeted us but ignored the other chap on the hire boat!!! So snobbery is still alive and well in England. What that clown did not realize was that the hire boater had been hiring boats for 24 years so had one hell of a lot more experience than the owner boater!!!
We stopped and had a rather yummy lunch and felt we then needed to keep moving to wear off the calories.
There is always something entertaining to see along the towpath and this was no exception. And, believe us, there was something (one) living inside!!!
We chugged along for a couple of more hours and then found an isolated spot in the country to moor for the night. At our initial mooring spot we were asked if we would move as there was five long boats coming to moor beside this rather extravagant corporate tent where they were having a barn dance. As we were not offered an invite we decided it was a good idea to move further up the canal away from all the noise. Along with our remoteness came the lack of wifi!!!
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