Warwick

Here I am Rune

Distance 2.9 miles

Total 927 Locks 54 Tunnels

Running total mileage 1324.7miles

Well that was a hard day’s work I would have to say, only a few miles but 21 broad locks to go through. The Hatton Flight has an interesting method of raising the ground paddles that I can’t say that I’ve seen elsewhere, it is a bit like an elongated car bottle jack but it takes 20 turns on the windlass to get the paddle open which when multiplied by 21 locks means 420 turns to wind all of the paddles up (and another 420 turns to wind them down again). It should build up the arm muscles a bit but is like sandpapering your hands which now feel as rough as hell.

In fairness we didn’t make bad progress through the locks taking just 4 hours and 10 minutes, bearing in mind that quite a lot of locks were set against us. A bloke I was talking to yesterday just after he had come up the flight was quite chuffed that it had only taken him 3 hours and 10 minutes but that was two boats travelling together and three shore teams, one working the lock the boats were in, one preparing the next lock and one shutting down the previous lock. We had to do all that with just the two of us since no other boats seemed to be doing the locks today going in our direction.

 Think we can now afford a bit of a rest now that we have reached Warwick, and to be honest, I would like to have a look around the place so may stay here a few days. 

An interesting sculpture towards the top of Hatton Flight

What Hatton Flight looks like halfway through!