Ignoring advice

I'm always grateful for advice, and I quite often ask for it in these posts.  However sometimes you have to do the other thing.  This happens in two ways. First on matters of taste and judgement, where I ask how people like suggested colour schemes and I ruthlessly over rule their ideas on the grounds that I have a pass in O level Art (2nd attempt, 1964).  Then  on matters of cruising routes, where constraints of time get in the way.


This summer we plan to have a go at the Leicester Ring.  This rough sketch shows the route.

In the time honoured convention the heavy lines show where the locks are wide enough for 2 boats, and the thinner lines where they have single locks.  Altogether it's 150 miles and 105 locks.

To us this is new ground and so I've been reading up on the forums to get the lowdown.   By all accounts it's a lovely ring to do, but practically everyone says it would be best to go round in an anti clockwise direction.  I think this is so that you go downstream on the river and where the locks are biggest and heaviest.  Also, starting from Crick it would make sense to get the River Soar out of the way earlier on so if there are delays cause by flooding, we could make up the time on the canals.   Between Fazeley and Braunston there are only 17 locks - easy.

So why are we planning to go the other way?  Because we have what Linda Snell would call a window.  (If you don't know who Linda Snell is, you are better off staying that way). We want to go to the Braunston Rally at the end of June, and then we would like to complete the ring in time to do our annual pilgrimage to Shropshire (camping and walking) when the school hols start.  We could complete the ring easily in a fortnight, but what would be the point of that when we have a bit more time.  We'll likely detour to Coventry and Market Harborough and maybe we'll even sneak up the Trent and Mersey to Great Haywood  and Tixall wide for nostalgic reasons.

So the plan is to get through Braunston before the rally and moor as close as we can the other side  By then we'll have 17 of the 105 locks behind us..  Then after the rally continue on round the ring.  The wrong way.