A lock staircase - Braunston to Leamington

Braunston is the place where the Grand Union Canal and the Oxford Canal meet. Going from one to the other means going under these beautiful wrought iron bridges.

The Horseley Ironworks bridges at Braunston

The first few miles out of Braunston are a stretch of the Grand Union that is shared with the Oxford Canal, which was built much earlier. It avoids having too many locks by following the contours of the land closely, which makes it a lot more winding than the GU. These few miles had a very different feel to the canal up to now as it meanders around all the hills. A little taste of the Oxford canal later in the summer on my return to London.

Winding around the hills

The bridges look different on the Oxford Canal too

Eventually at Napton, the GU leaves the Oxford Canal again as it moves on towards Birmingham and the Oxford Canal goes ... well to Oxford. I did the first three locks here on my own. They are different to the locks so far as they are hydraulic and easier to wind. But they create massive swirls. It will be interesting to go up this type of lock as I get closer to Birmingham (I prefer going down when I'm on my own!).

There are a number of interesting locks on this stretch. First there is the Stockton flight with ten locks, the biggest flight so far (but just a small warmup to the upcoming Hatton flight in a few days with 21 locks!). Also there is a lock staircase. More on that later. I shared the Stockton flight with a nice couple from Portsmouth. We chatted about sailing and seamanship as we descended the locks, as the husband used to work on a supply ship to the navy (and as usual the husband staid on the boat to chat, while the his wife did all the lock work).

Stockton locks

In the middle of the Stockton flight

After this I had enough for the day and found a lovely mooring close to a pub at the bottom of the flight. Two issues became apparent quickly: it started to rain all afternoon and THERE WAS NO INTERNET (and no TV reception). This has never happened before and it made me realise how much I rely on my little mobile wifi router to connect me to the world. Well, I read a book, on real paper, for the first time in ages.

The next day the rain had stopped and it was time to tackle the staircase. In a lock staircase, there is no stretch of water in between the locks (the "pound"), but one lock's bottom gate is the next lock's top gate, in other words, one lock is emptied directly into the next. I wasn't sure exactly how to set them to empty or fill them but actually it's very logical. And if you get it wrong, it simply won't work.

I had planned to contemplate this a bit to work out exactly how to do it, but as I arrived, there was a boat just pulling into the lower lock, so this was the ideal moment for me to go straight into the upper one. Fortunately the people on that boat had done it before and explained it all. We closed all the gates and opened the paddles between our boats. As my boat went down, their boat came up. As we got level, we simply opened the gates between us and swapped sides. It was so easy and it saves a lot of time opening and closing the gates. I wish there were more of these types of locks on the canal, but this only works well if there is only one boat in each lock. If two boats go in either side, then it doesn't work as there is no space in between to swap sides. Have a look at this page if you really want to know how locks work  (It says about staircase locks: "These locks are ordinarily manned by lock-keepers, since everyone else gets hopelessly confused." Well, not this one)

Not very obvious, but this is the staircase, there's a boat directly below.

I shared the remaining locks up to Leamington Spa as well, so this was all easy. I stopped in a nice shady spot just before Leamington.

Mooring in the shade outside Leamington Spa

Sharing a table with Arthur at the Boat Inn near Leamington Spa

I will dedicate a separate post for Leamington Spa and Warwick, as I spent quite a lot of time in the area for various reasons. Stay tuned!