The Route March

 A cute cockerel

It was a cool and grey view across the marina when we woke this morning. We decided to do some housekeeping and set about cleaning the boat. The good thing about a small boat is that this only takes about an hour, and so we were ready to head off to the IWA festival by mid morning. We had decided to walk since the festival site was only a couple of miles along the towpath, and there would be lots of boats to see en-route. The towpath is on the opposite side of the canal to the marina, so we had to head in the wrong direction initially, to get to the road, leading to the nearest bridge. As we headed towards the bridge over the canal, we spotted the bird above, sitting on the knee of a guy on a bench in his garden. This bird was so tame, that they take it on holiday and have even taken it for walks along the beach! On reaching the canal, we found it strangely quiet with no people or boats in sight. We struck out heading east, enjoying some lovely countryside albeit accompanied by the drone of the nearby A38 traffic. After a while we were surprised that we still hadn't seen any boats moored since we knew they were moored 2 deep for about a kilometer either side of the site. To cut a long story short, we did finally reach the site, but only after walking for about 5 miles! Somehow we had both mis-calculated the distance!

 Boats festooned with bunting

When we did reach the moored boats, the festival mood was much in evidence with bunting covering the boats and most of the houses along the bank. People from the houses had set up stalls selling cakes and BBQ food and there were lots of people wandering about.

 Going nowhere fast

The moored boats reduced the canal to a narrow channel only wide enough for a single boat. Marshalls were controlling the flow of boats in each direction but even so, it was very slow going for anyone trying to get through the town.

 A viking settlement

Once into the festival we headed for the food court, bought coffee and danish and then sat down and recovered from our unexpected hike. We made contact with Rosemary and Jim who we met in Leicester and knew were at the festival. We met up and exchanged stories and they told us about their adventure on the Trent, becoming grounded on a mud bank and waiting 9 hours for the tide to change and refloat them. Scary stuff. There were all manner of stalls and sideshows including a complete viking settlement and terrier racing.

Brewery shire horses

After watching a parade of fine shire horses from the nearby breweries we then set off back to the marina - in a taxi! Tomorrow Hoodman is due - will we see him?.....