A Farm, a Bench, a Church and an Aqueduct.

Wednesday 16th July, 2014 in Wilmcote.
M woke up confused (so what's new???)! The sun was risng in the north-west, or so she thought. It was merely that MM was facing in the opposite direction from how she remembered it from yesterday. It takes a while (two and a half years, in M's case) to get used to waking up facing in different directions each day!

After breakfast, we walked down the lane to Yew Tree Farm, which has a farm shop - but in fact it is much more than that. All the original brick-built farm buildings have been restored and each contains a small retail craft outlet - 16 of them in all, plus a very well patronised cafe built into the old brick barn.

In true Goon Show fashion, we were "mad, impetuous fools" and on an impulse, we bought a beautiful old "cartwheel" garden bench; it was love at first sight! Delivery (free) to be arranged.

To celebrate our moment of madness, we had coffee and cake in the cafe and sat up in the gallery with the sun streaming through the windows.

Afterwards we walked down into the village to visit the glorious and renowned church of St. Peter's Wootton, the oldest in Warwickshire. The present structure dates from around 900AD, it also has a close connection with Shakespeare in that it is believed that Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway used to visit their friend, John Mascall (the vicar of Wootton), during their courting days and it is possible that Shakespeare taught in the village school run by Mascall.

We had lunch back on MM and then set off south towards Wilmcote. Only one lock today!
Without question, the highlight of the day was Edstone Aqueduct, built in 1816 and nearly 200 yards long. It is a marvellous sight, whether seen from above or below.

It is unusual in that the towpath is level with the bottom of the iron trough - so it really shows how shallow the trough is and how tall MM is!

A passing cyclist stopped to ask about the practicalities of buying and living aboard a narrowboat; he said he was seriously considering the idea. He had just cycled from Birmingham to Stratford and was now on his way back. We gave him our copy of "Towpath Talk" - full of good advice and lots of boats for sale.

At Wilmcote, there was a line of boats on the visitors' moorings including a Kingsground boat nb "Pendle-Warter". She is KG's sixty-ninth boat, launched in 2005. Our first sighting of a KG boat this summer.

We set off to explore the village but got side-tracked by the sight of these magnificent sunflowers. At first we thought that they were artificial because they were almost unnaturally uniform, but in fact they were real and each was named after the grandmothers of the people on board!

We walked past Mary Arden's house, Shakespeare's mother. It is a large working Tudor Farm and we are looking forward to visiting it in due course.
We do see some spectacular sunsets from MM, but tonight's was quite extraordinary, just a blaze of colour as if the whole sky was on fire!

Tomorrow M is taking the train back home to baby-sit for Eva and Tilly. She will be back on Sunday and the plan is to visit Mary Arden's house on Monday.
Today: 4 miles, 1 lock and 3.3 hours.
Trip: 78 miles, 66 locks and 52.8 hours.