We have decided that “brindley” is an adjective, as in, “This bit of canal is quite brindley.” James Brindley built the first canals of the industrial revolution, and he followed contour lines as much as possible to minimize the use of locks and spread the advantages of canal transport far and wide. It follows that brindle must be a verb meaning to wander apparently aimlessly here and there with very little visible concern for reaching your ultimate goal.

The North Oxford used to be very brindley, being designed by the man himself, but in the 19th century it was aggressively straightened out using embankments and cuttings, leaving the original loops and meanders of Brindley’s design to silt up or be built over. A few of them have short sections still used for mooring, with the entrance sometimes spanned by elegant Victorian iron bridges.

There’s a working boat rally in Braunston this weekend, so we have passed a number of historic work boats coming the other way. This one was built in 1935. The open hold (or cratch) would be filled with coal or china clay or sugar or chocolate or bricks or lumber. Planks placed across the upright posts would allow the crew to saunter from bow to stern.

You can tell the time of year by what is in bloom along the canals. We missed the hawthorn in May, and the early June yellow irises are now well past their best. The late June dog roses are starting to lose petals, but the yellow water lilies are starting to show. We’re also seeing lots of white blackberry blossom.

The sun was shining today, and after a crisp morning it warmed up nicely. Sections of the canal that would be gloomy and dank in the rain were transformed into magical portals.

Thirsty horses came down to the canal to drink.

You may notice in the above photo that we use a white bucket to cap our stove flue when the chimney is not in place. Today we passed two boats that used a big beer can for this.

Is that a mega-can or a micro-keg?

The Oxford Canal finally joined the Coventry Canal, and we reached our first lock of the day, a little six inch stop lock to prevent one canal company from stealing water from the other. That is followed by a vicious hairpin turn under a bridge, which we managed without hitting anything. I would not like to do that in a seventy foot boat, though.

We moored up on the outskirts of the town of Bedworth. We walked into town through a throng of schoolchildren just released from the local secondary school. The town center has been completely demolished and rebuilt in the past fifty years, and they made room for the Mother of all Tescos. We loaded up on all the groceries we missed out on getting yesterday, and splurged on a taxi to get back to the boat.

The edge of the town center is marked by a strange phallic statue denoting a series of businesses like mining and hat making that are no longer happening in Bedworth.

In another hundred years with there be another layer of disks with Tesco and Iceland on them?