Turning back to Radford

 Bad internet yesterday, not much better tonight, so we'll see what happens.

We had puffy whites in the sky most of the day yesterday, as you can note from the first picture.

We travelled through many locks with this couple of live-aboards, and stopped when they did for water. There was a single tap, so we waited, and waited, then we waited some more...  Their fill-up took the better part of an hour, ours took the better part of half an hour.  It turns out, we likely have a 100 gallon water tank and as suggested, we should fill up at every opportunity.  That's worked well for us so far; we haven't run out of water so far.

So here's Len, chomping at the bit to hook up our hose to the tap...

There were dark clouds off and on, but, no rain. Here's a thatched roof house that we happened upon as we checked out local villages.

During our walkabouts we found a church that was open, so we went inside and had a good look.  Here are a few chairs that I thought were kind of interesting.

Churches buried their deceased all around the church grounds, some of these graves being well over 100 years old, and many were possibly much older but the stones were too weatherbeaten to be legible.

 Since we had worked so hard on the many locks that we did yesterday, we treated ourselves to a Pub supper.  This pub came highly recommended and did not disappoint: the food was very close to exceptional, the service very friendly, and the ambiance just great.  This was not a place to save money and we didn't...

Today we had a bit of an issue: the canal had no spots that were wide enough for us to turn around since we decided to start heading back to our marina.  We ended up trying twice without success, our boat was just too long to fit in cross-ways.  We had to go up a few locks until we found a marina that had it's own little side-branch of the canal.  We managed to get our bow into the side branch and swing our stern around so we could start heading back. It ended up being far more complex than I've described, but the deed was done and we headed back northward.

We met this family of swans that gave us much amusement. Just how the parents stayed pure white in such murky water is a secret for sure...

We stopped in the small village of Radford for the night but had a good opportunity to walk around and make a few pictures.  Here's a front yard garden with vivid colours that just blow your mind.

Walking up to the main corner, this manor house greeted us.

Just across the street was this charming thatched roof.

This is a view of the other side of the manor house; lots of rooms to clean...

On the side street by the manor, this slate roofed house had lovely eyebrow windows that I found quite fascinating.

 Further down the street, I found these lovely blooms on a bush, and I haven't a clue as to what they might be.

And finally, another thatched roof house along the main road.

We'll have a few dozen locks to go up tomorrow and everybody is resting up except for me [for now]. Opening the lock gates is using your weight to advantage to get them open. Lifting the paddles to let the water in or out of the lock is a different matter: they are on a mechanism that requires one to turn a shaft about 24 turns to lift the paddles to allow the water to pass.  This is a grinding task that's been done for a few hundred years on the canal; it could use some changes to improve the process, but historical canals are not improved... 

All this to say, the captain's crew will be walking, shoving, windings and just plain working hard most of the day tomorrow.