Last night spent  in the country moored just above Calcutt top lock on the Grand Union which we feel is a bit of an inaccurate name as it is suffering from a lot of vegetation growth on the offside  which narrows it down quite a bit in places not at all a grand canal as the name implies , we got off  to a lazy start as it was a hot sunny morning and there were quite a few boats turning , filling with water and one hire boat that wouldn't start occupied by ten students from Devon , a nice group of people we found out later as we ended up travelling together for most of the day , this really was very fortunate for us as we progressed down through twenty three!! locks , plenty of people to share the work but even they were starting to flag by late afternoon.
We parted company when they stopped to meet an engineer to repair their boat .They passed us again when we stopped to empty our rubbish and we last saw them going into Royal Leamington Spa where we are moored for the night and have just been into town to get a fish supper.
Tomorrow or the day after we head on to Warwick and we shall have a similar amount of locks to work .
I hope that we have to have some one as good to share with .
Of course what I forgot to say earlier was that the locks after Calcutt are wide locks ie they will accommodate two boats up to 70 feet long side by side