Wednesday 27th June

Set off at 830 and we were the first boat going south.

Stopped at the boatyard on the outskirts of Stratford. They don't sell river licences but I did fill up with diesel there. They are now part of Valley cruisers.

There was one space left in Banford basin so we occupied that and purchased a 7 day licence for the Avon. Went to the West End pub for lunch.

After lunch we locked down onto the river and headed downstream. Although we wanted to get to Bidford we thought that the moorings would be full so we stopped at the last lock upstream.

There were 2 narrowboats moored there already and a guy on one of them confirmed our suspicions about Bidford as they had come upstream and been unable to moor there.

Walked into Bidford and went to The Frog to eat, it was steak night and there was a rock academy competition taking place. After that we checked out the New Saxon but their one beer pump was full of cleaning fluid. So we went to the Old Bull which has cask marque approval.