Carrying on

I took some photos of the roof garden yesterday, just to prove that despite all the rain we are managing to grow something edible apart from herbs.

The weather was so hot and sunny that we decided to leave Stratford upon Avon and carry on down river.

We had lunch en-route. Does life get much better than home-made pizza in scorching hot sunshine, cruising on a beautiful river?  Maybe a glass of red wine might have improved it, but we don't tend to drink on the boat at lunchtime any more.

As the weather was so good I decided to do a couple of loads of washing on the way, so that by the time we moored up at Pilgrim's Lock (now re-named Barton Grange Lock) it was ready to hang out on the whirly-gig.

I like mooring here. It's in the middle of nowhere and there are hardly any passing walkers so it's ideal to let Chico off the lead for a run around. He had a great time playing hide and seek in the long grassy meadow beside the lock.

We'd planned on staying for another night, but it was raining when we got up this morning and showed no sign of stopping.  By lunchtime the radio was quoting 97 flood warnings and the river was starting to rise.  As we didn't have any phone or internet signal here we decided we'd better move closer to civilisation just in case the river went into flood, so we checked the river level (well into the green) and set off. There was quite a flow on the river but nothing too drastic.  By the time we'd gone just over a mile to the next lock the marker board was into the orange so we decided not to continue. It would be different if we were on a hire boat, but as this is home we tend to be a lot more cautious on rivers.

We're moored on the island between the lock and the weir, on rings that rise up tall poles as the water level rises.

A couple of boats have gone past since we moored up. One was a hire boat who struggled getting out of the main river current to come to the lock and the other was a large rowing boat full of beefy looking men, none of whom were wearing life-jackets. They obviously didn't think there was any danger but by this time the river level was half way into the orange and still rising.  In fact the level had gone up over 3 inches since we'd moored up.

It's turned into a beautiful evening now that the rain has stopped, but the level is still rising and is now well into the red.

This is the weir. When we were here last year there was hardly any water going down it.