Sunday morning was a bit drizzly so we decided to stay at Braunston until Monday after all. We had to walk up to the village to get a mobile phone signal as there was absolutely none on the canal! Ken found out the funeral is next Tues so we aren’t in so much of a hurry to get back as we thought. By the canal at Braunston is The Boat Shop, so called because it started off on a boat, where we purchased a rather nice brass companion set and a coal bucket rather reminiscent of a large German helmet! I now have my kitchen tongs back in the kitchen, the screwdriver is back in the toolbox and the plastic bucket I was using for coal is where ever it was before!
During the morning we got clobbered by a Willow Wren hire boat making a rather odd sort of jacknife move across the canal and tail ending us. Not sure what he was doing as there wasn’t another boat in sight (apart from us and we were moored up!) so he wasn’t trying to avoid anyone coming the other way. Anyway, no damage was done so we aren’t worried.
Fat Dog was exhausted after his efforts of the day before and spent most of the day asleep, so we didn’t bother to try to take him to the pub again, although we had moved a lot closer to it! After we had been to the pub we had a walk up to the top of the locks and finding several moorings there decided to do the locks and move nearer to the tunnel for a quick get away today.
And a quick get away it was! We were up at 6-45am and in the tunnel by 7-45am. Braunston Tunnel is 2042 yds long and took us 25 mins to get through. After this excitement came Norton Junction where we came on to the Leicester Section of the GUC and were 41 miles from Leicester. Next were Watford Locks, right near the Watford Gap services (no we didn’t pop in for an all day breakfast!). Watford Locks are 7 single locks which comprise of 2 separate ones, then a staircase of 4 and finally another one on it’s own. The lady lock keeper was very friendly and guided me through the process of filling and emptying in the right order in the staircase, red paddle then white paddle, (very important!).
Just as we got over that came Crick tunnel, (does the excitement never end you are asking?), 1528 yds long and very drippy in places, we should have put our waterproofs on. We were going to moor up at Crick (and go to the shop, I mean pub!) but as it is a very popular place and because a lot of the 14 day moorings have just become ‘long term permit holders only’ for the winter, we couldn’t find any where to moor so we carried on to Yelvertoft. We found a very nice mooring here so decided to stay the night. We did try to get Fat Dog to walk in to the village (to the pub) but he didn’t want to go. As it turned out he made the right decision because since Oct 1st the pub has shut lunchtimes! Nevermind.
You may be interested to know that for dinner tonight we had a zander, which my ‘hunter gatherer’ husband caught (no, not the one in the photo in the gallery!) and it was very nice, rather like whiting we thought.
Not sure how far we’ll get tomorrow, maybe Foxton.
Cheers B.
