Christmas Cruise - Day 4

Set off around 9am today. Lovely morning, very still. Stopped at Lime Farm Marina to buy 3 bags of coal. Nice little marina, with very friendly staff.

Had some excitement when approaching bridge 52. Fellow on the footpath warned me that there were two lads on the biridge with an air rifle firing at a floating can in the canal. They were facing the direction I was heading, so probably had no idea I was about to come under the bridge. Thought about sounding my horn to warn of my presence, but then thought that if they were planning to use me as target practice they'd have time to aim. As it happened, I passed under the bridge without incident. Quite disturbing really, as if they'd wanted to use me as target practice, there was very little I could do about it. Having stones thrown at you is bad enough, but being shot at...

As I was mooring at Brownsover, Rugby, the boat following said that they had been shot at, and had called the police.

Mooring at Rugby has been quite an experience today. I am now at my third mooring spot, and am finally happy! I had initially stopped before the water point thinking that the sides looked straight and not too bad condition. Sides may be straight, but the boat still ends up being about two feet from the bank. Not ideal...

So I decided to carry on under bridge 58 to see what spaces were there. When I was passed this way a few days ago, the tow path side had no boats at all. I was surprised to see that today the tow path side had 5 boats moored, with the only spaces being on the sharp bend to the right... I had little option but to moor up on the bend as I had to pop into Tesco. Around half the boat was on a straight edge - I'd tried to balance out the gap at the bow and stern to the edge, otherwise one end would be sticking way out into the cut. It was good enough to leave the boat for an hour or so, but again far from ideal.

As I got back from my exciting trip to Tesco, the boat moored behind me set off. I took the opportunity to move our boat back to what looked like a much straighter edge. Pleased I did, as about 90% of the boat is now moored along a straight edge.

Apart from picking up the turkey at Braunston tomorrow, all our Christmas food shopping is now done (if I've forgotten something we will just have to do without). Adam is due to arrive from London at around 8pm tonight.

5 miles, 0 locks (28 miles, 6 locks)