We made an early-ish start to the day, with the aim to get as far as we could through the Hatton flight of locks before the sun got too hot. With that in mind we got dressed and set off straight away, with teas and coffees on the go, followed by some cereal for breakfast.

We soon hit the outskirts of Leamington Spa, and it felt good watching people commute to work and knowing we were on holiday!

There are a few “warm-up” locks before the main flight proper begins

We hit the locks just after another pair of boats had started going up too, so unfortunately we had to reset each lock before we could go in. We easily kept pace with the boats in front though – one was clearly a learner driver, and the other liked to take things at his own pace shall we say.

Fortunately our luck turned for the better when another hire boat caught us up – two parents, two grown up children and their partners, who hire a boat every year so knew exactly what they were doing and helped run ahead and get the locks ready for not just us but the boats in front too.

In other breaking news, after the first few locks Sarah decided to have a go at helming us through the locks. This was very brave as Sarah doesn’t normally like to steer in locks, let alone with an audience. Naturally she did it all with aplomb – a magic bean to Sarah for such an excellent job!

Once we were through the locks we moored up to have a late lunch, and then walked up to the train station to say farewell to Rosemary, and thanks for all her help – it was very much appreciated, along with the chocolate cake too!