While in Evesham we bought Catty a present of a harness & lead, so that she could go outside in more populous area, we should have known she wouldn’t appreciate it because when we tried it out here at Bidford she just lay down & refused to move. Oh well despite what O2’s ads would have us believe you can’t make a cat more dog!
We left our neighbours, nb Against the Odds, at the mooring and headed for Stratford. As you can see Bidford bridge has a large centre arch which you might assume is the one to use, but you’d be wrong; see the view from the other side. We followed nb Woodham, who had been moored at The Frog’s mooring through the proper arch and teamed up with them at all the locks to Stratford.
At one lock a cruiser had already prepared the lock and waved both of us in, when we had tied up he wound open both paddles and while the two narrowboats were quite stable, he was bobbing about like a cork with the water from the sluices washing over the front of his boat. This didn’t seem to perturb him or his lady who was holding their ropes with her feet casually up on the dashboard.
At Luddington Lock we spotted Laplander an iron hulled steam powered ice boat dating from 1830, who later came through Stratford ‘Whoop-Whooping’ with their steam whistle.
Just two more locks and we were at Stratford recreation ground where the moorings were quite full so we breasted up with Woodham until a space became free in the morning near the bandstand. Before that we topped up with water, a combined operation with three other boats & three hoses which meant none of us had to move.
We have been into the town today, visited the market, had ice creams (one Honeycomb & one Salted Caramel, thanks to June’s recommendation who happed to phone us from Banbury) and we had a ‘ploughman’s’ lunch at The View bar & restaurant in the recreation grounds.
Received a Facebook message this afternoon saying our friends Lis & John from Gloucestershire were in Stratford, it turned out they were having tea at the RSC café almost opposite, but hadn’t spotted us! Needless to say we invited them over and spent the next few hours chatting until it was getting dark!