Leamington Spa and the Cape of Good Hope

Wednesday:  After a night of rain, and with it still raining it was obviously going to be a wet weather gear day.  So a 7 am start again to get a good lead on the 10 lock flight.   Now I have noticed that in general, if I put on the wet weather gear, it stops raining.  And so it did, well almost.   Just a fine drizzle from time to time.   Having descended the first two locks guess what!   A lock keeper turns up and wants to let water down the flight and would I mind waiting.  Not much one can say really, but by waiting I get caught up with another boat.  This turned out to be another hire boat crewed by about 8 students on a week's holiday.   Worried initially that there seemed to be no organisation, they were just standing around just chatting, I had visions of a slow and painful descent.   However, after a few locks they got the idea and had both advance and cleaning up parties were deployed, serviced by a seemingly constant supply of tea & bacon butties mysteriously appearing from inside the boat. Amazingly, therefore, I reached Leamington 3 hours early.    Pat arrived at the appointed time and we decided to press on a little way, at least to the bottom of the Hatton flight, as we knew that we could make Catherine de Barnes the next day and get an easy approach to Birmingham.   So we got to the top of Cape Locks and found a convenient mooring, now in the rain again.   Visited the Cape of Good Hope ("No muddy boots in the lounge please") to find the football in full swing on the pub screen.   A short visit in socks!