Tuesday - soggy socks day.

A mixed start to the day with some strong overnight wind and rain, which woke me around about dawn when something up on deck went crash. I hadn't battened down the hatches before going to bed and now regretted it, having visions of the expensive (£60) new TV aerial mast getting bent because I'd left it fully extended. 


So about dawn I pulled on two items of clothing and braved the elephants elements outside to lower the aerial and check for what went bang, which I eventually found was Barbara's daffodils - fortunately they seemed to be unharmed by falling 2 feet or so and just required putting back in their eggshell pot. 


It wasn't worth trying to get back to sleep, so I read for a bit until the sun rose properly and with it, a blue sky magically appeared: 

In due course we set off with the usual accompaniment of little birds (nice reflections as well): 

Then a bit further on we got the promised heavy shower. I was nearly prepared for it, but still had my sandals on, so what with hail and torrential rain, my socks got somewhat soggy - reminding me of Bernard Wrigley's (The Bolton Bullfrog) song "When Your Clogs Let Water In" which has a line that goes "Nobody loves you when you've got soggy socks"! 


So after it blew over, Barbara took over steering while I made myself lovable again with dry socks! And the sun came out and we got a nice sparkly canal again:

Eventually we got to Hawkesbury Junction with a smart new footbridge: 

Straight on here to go into Coventry; a reasonably pleasant route as inner city waterways go with a short tunnel, unusually illuminated - most canal tunnels are dark and wet: 

Even in this very urban environment, spring was becoming evident:

Approaching the basin in the centre of Coventry, which is the terminus of this canal, we found a smart new footbridge, which wasn't there when we last visited in April 2000: 

And here we are, in the Canal Basin in Coventry: 

And this was April 2000:

Before settling down for the night, we walked into town and looked at the old (bombed) cathedral with its spectacular new edition alongside: 

Oh yes, I forgot to mention the problems with inner-city canals: rubbish! At the back of the boat we have something called the weedhatch. Quite why it's called a weedhatch I don't know as the many times I've had to open it to get access to the propellor to free it from debris, the one thing I've never found around the prop has been any weed. On the way through to the basin we had to stop twice to open the weedhatch and remove first, a load of plastic bags and twine: 


and then as we were trying to back into our mooring in the basin, something even worse felt as though it had grabbed the prop. I was amazed to eventually free a much mangled motorcycle tyre from the prop: 

All part of the fun of narrowboating!


More tomorrow.