Post Crick: Day 8

After our stationary weekend while I went to work, we are on the move again.  I arrived back from my night shift at 9am and we set off shortly afterwards.  After a few minutes we saw a dog jump in the canal from the towpath after a duck.  The duck didn’t want to just fly off because she had five ducklings, so she was quaking furiously.  The dog’s owner was calling it repeatedly, but it was completely ignoring her, just swimming around after the mother duck.  It didn’t appear to be interested in the ducklings, who gathered together and kept away anyway.  Eventually the dog gave up and got out of the water, and was put on a lead.  Let’s hope it’s kept on a lead in future.

At Hillmorton Locks, both locks were empty, and a Rose hire boat was just going into one.  We used the other, but because our lock had two working top paddles and theirs only had one, we were up first.  We continued side by side up the locks, with Adrian giving the two ladies on board some advice on what they should be doing.

After passing all the moored boats on the Barby Straight, we soon caught up with a boat ahead because they never went faster than tickover.  I had to keep dropping into neutral to avoid getting too close.  We were behind them for a very long mile before they pulled in to moor up.  Soon after that, the familiar Braunston church and windmill came into view.

We wanted to stop for water at the junction, but there were two boats already on the water point, one of which had only just arrived, so we decided to go up to the Stop House water point instead.  There were also two boats there, so we thought we’d turn round in the marina entrance and see what the situation was then.  Mid-turn, there was a slight misunderstanding from a boat which had been on the pump out point in the marina, as he came flying out backwards.  He’d thought we were waiting to take his place, and it was only when he was right in my way that he realised what we were doing.  He was very apologetic though.  By then, one of the boats was leaving the water point, so we took their place, got a wash load going, and filled the tank.  We had lunch while it was doing its thing.  Once we were full, we returned to the junction and turned onto the shared Oxford/Grand Union section.

There’s lots of lovely countryside along this stretch, which we probably appreciate more these days than when we were based round here and did it all the time.  There were a few fields of blue flowers, which I think might be linseed.

We carried on through Bridge 107, where we turned around in the wide section there, which according to CanalPlanAC is called the Thick Thorne House winding hole.  On each pass through the Lower Shuckburgh moorings, we had a brief chat with Mark on Mjor.  We returned to a nice quiet spot with a nice view which we have used before, just short of Bridge 102.

15 miles, 3 locks.  (81 miles, 40 locks)