Monday 26 April Radford Semele

This morning I woke again to the dawn chorus, if its that good why don't they do it at a reasonable time of day like 7 am.?
We left Lowsonford at 9 am. first away with a good road, CanalTime were not far behind. We met three boats between here and the junction so were able to leave a few gates open. At Kingswood Junction it was hard right and back onto the Grand Union canal heading South. There was next to nothing about and I don't think we met more than two boat between here and Hatton. We were going to fill with water at the top of the flight, but there was already a boat there taking water and the top lock was almost full so we carried on down. The top lock was the only one with us, all the rest were against us.
We carried on down alone through 6 locks until we found a hire boat stopped for lunch on the lock moorings between the two locks. There were 5 of them in an 8 berth, 70 foot Valleycruiser boat. They jumped at the opportunity to join us and we continued down the flight together. We could see a boat moored half way down the flight,but they were making no effort to come up towards us until we started to drop the lock above them. By then it was to late as a pair of boats breasted together had come up from the lock below them and were passing them before they realised what was happening. So at the end of all this they still had the remainder of the flight against them as they followed the breasted pair up to the top.All this gave us a good road down the rest of the flight and with one member from the hire boat working ahead opening top gates we were soon down. Unfortunately the chap working ahead didn't know how many locks there were and carried on to Budbrooke Junction looking for more.
Cape locks were a joy, both top gates were wide open on the top lock and as we locked out, two boats were just leaving the bottom lock coming up. Still requiring water we planned to stop below the lock and fill up, but again there was a boat taking water, as we opened the bottom gates he packed his hose away and made ready to enter the lock, another gate we didn't have to close and we pulled into the water point to top up.
The hire boat stopped for a cup of tea and discussed the possibility of visiting Warwick Castle tomorrow morning. We both set off together with them mooring at Tesco overnight, planning to take a taxi to the castle tomorrow. We continued on to moor at 6 pm. opposite Radford Semele church. We were surprised to find this is still wrapped in plastic following a fire there several years ago.