Today’s post is courtesy of our new helmsman for the weekend, Joel…

Today tells the story of how fishing lines were cut by props, the scoffing of an entire pringles can (that was me) and a perfect demonstration of separation anxiety.

As soon as we exited the lock out of the Stratord-upon-Avon basin we stumbled upon a regatta that was taking place all day, we were originally told that it would be completely fine to waltz straight through… upon second though the shouty man on the safety boat for the regatta decided we would need to faff about a little more before we could leave.

Pictured above is my dad and I helming, I liked it rather a lot and ended up doing I most of the rest of the day (except for locks).

One other exception to my helmsman-ship was a tricky bridge that had been damaged by a lorry and repaired, nevertheless there were still bricks and debris in the water meaning that there was only one safe arch through the bridge.

Here are some welcome sweeping s-bends through the reeds as the river meanders it course through the British countryside.

As we edged closer to our final destination at a blistering 4 mph, we entered yet another lock with our unscheduled boat-buddy for the day the lock ended up being so large that their was space for a yoghurt pot to squeeze in.

Moored up for the night, all that needs to happen now is for the duck outside to stop yelling!