The last few days on the canal boat trip were pretty uneventful except for a few things. We got through the 29 locks at Caen Hill relatively quickly on Tuesday (just over 2 hours I think it was), and then it was time to say farewell to Stella at the town at the top, Devizes, where we did a little bit of necessary grocery shopping.
The afternoon was spent moseying along the canal until we didn't want to drive anymore. The weather was relatively nice, so we pulled up for a bit of afternoon tea and then it was decided we would video our dramatic re-enactment of Makeda's run in with a psycho ginga on the canal a few days before. Turns out Makeda had accidentally hit the ginga's boat on one of the narrow bits of the canal, and the woman had turned it into such a palaver, screaming out about how this is her house, we wouldn't like it if she hit our car... yada yada... and then getting her mate "Dave", who happened to be just wandering along the path, involved too. It was apparently quite amusing, this altercation - so much so that we just had to immortalise it in film. Unfortunately we haven't finished the edit yet, but when we do - stay tuned, it'll be posted here.
On Wednesday morning we negotiated the turnaround and started on our way back to Bath. This meant that on Wednesday afternoon we had to contend with the 29 locks at Caen Hill again - but this time we were on our own and often had to fill the lock first before we could go in, so it meant that it took much longer, more like 3 1/2 hours or so. We moored up and that evening played several renditions of "Things", a board game Erik brought from Canada, which is very funny and very good. Oh and "Articulate".
Thursday was a relatively easy day, nice enough weather, good company on the boat and all. We ended up mooring up at Bradford-Upon-Avon for the night. As the weather had been nice during the day we decided to have a BBQ - but just as we got the BBQ lit, the heavens opened up - and we had to cook our food underneath the shelter of an umbrella and finish it off in the oven!
On Friday the weather was nice again, so much that no-one really wanted to drive - everyone wanted to stay on the roof and enjoy the sun - so we spent most of the day still moored at Bradford. I started to go a little stir crazy mid-afternoon so I went for a walk into town - such a cute little town too, lovely architecture and cute shops. Late afternoon we set off as we realised the boat had to be returned Saturday morning, 9am, so we needed to be in striking distance of Bath. Turns out we had underestimated how far out we still were, so we decided we would need to be up early on Saturday to make the last hour or so for 9am.
The only problem with this was that when we got up Saturday morning, the engine wouldn't start. At all. So we had to phone up Anglo-Welsh and they sent out an engineer to fix the battery. We'd actually had quite a lot of problem with electricity on this boat, unlike last year, and many times we would have no power if we hadn't revved the engine enough during the day.
Suffice to say that it took a while for the guy to fix the problem, and we didn't end up getting back to the marina until around midday. It had been an enjoyable trip, but now we had to face the long drive back to London...
Anyway, here's a slideshow summary of the trip:
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