Just three hours of cruising this morning to get us into Newbury but not before we had a tussle with someone’s old T-shirt which found its way around our prop.
This is the worst fouling we have experienced on the canals and took a while plus a lot of strength to remove it.
What is amazing about this photo of an emptied canal in Manchester is that there are no shopping trolleys or bicycles. You certainly know where they are when you go over the top of them as you feel and hear them scrape along the bottom of the boat. Your first reaction is to get the boat into neutral to minimize any damage to the prop.
Newbury is a gorgeous town and has a well functioning Main Street and thriving pedestrian mall. There is a huge concern in the UK regards to their High Streets that have become ghosts centres apart from charity shops. The charity shops abound because their rents are subsidized so they can afford to be in the centre. Like most towns, big box stores are the main cause of the high streets demise but there are probably a number of other mitigating reasons.
The local butcher has been going since 1856 and still in business.
We enjoyed a walk along the pedestrian mall and around some of the town in beautiful weather.
This is the Town Hall which is still in use and surprising considering most town halls have relocated themselves into more salubrious dwellings.
As a rule we don’t normally go into churches but Di was interested in looking at the stained glass so after circumnavigation of it we found a door that we could open, so invited ourselves in. It appeared after talking to two gentlemen there that one of them forgot to lock the door we had snuck in by. They were very genial and told us the present church was 500 years old but an older one had stood on the same site prior to the current church. They were setting up for four days of holiday camp entertainment for 72 kids between the ages of 5-10 starting tomorrow. Good thing we are out of town tomorrow!!
There were lots of opportunities for some great shots and tomorrow we will add many more providing the weather allows for it.
We were concerned about finding a mooring in town as we had been warned that Newbury is very popular with the boating community but because of our midday arrival we had many a choice.
Tomorrow is a bucket list tick day which we will let you all know about tomorrow but nothing like keeping you in suspense.
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