Autumn Cruise: Day -2

Finally, later than usual, our autumn cruise is under way.  Except that it isn’t really because Adrian doesn’t finish work for another few days. I came up to the boat after work last night, arriving about 9.45.  This morning I had a pretty relaxed start to the day, and then began sorting things out and going shopping for food for the next few days.  I have never seen the Tesco at Wolverton so busy; it was a job to find a space in the car park, and trolleys were in short supply.  Apparently they are closed tomorrow for the Queen’s funeral — but honestly you’d have thought they were closing for a month.

Back at the boat I stowed everything away, had lunch, and then set off towards Cosgrove.  It had been sunny first thing but had now clouded over and was quite blustery.  I passed about six boats going the other way between the marina and the lock, so I had high hopes that it would be ready for me — but in fact it was empty with a bottom gate open.  I filled it, went in, and then noticed a boat heading towards me, so I went round and opened the other gate for him.  In fact there were two boats coming, but at least if the first one came down with me, the second one would have easier access to the lock landing.  The steerer of the other boat was also working the lock single handed (although I got the impression there was someone else on board), and then two guys from the boat behind came up and said they’d open the gates for us.  The other boat was going further than me, so I suggested he went first.

I moored up between the lock and the aqueduct, nearer the aqueduct end.  A job I needed to do here was see if a new tv antenna would work.  The little tiny one we bought a few years ago is only any good in a strong signal area, which this definitely isn’t — so we have bought a Moonraker instead.  Before doing anything too complicated, I just used the suction fixing to see whether it picked anything up.  It did — the best signal we’ve had for ages.  Then it turned out that our pole is too skinny for the pole mounting kit, so I’ve just left it suctioned to the cratch glass.  I’ll be interested to see whether it would still work in that position with the boat facing the other way.

I’d only done about half my steps target for the day, so I went for a walk around the Floodplain Forest Nature Reserve.  By this time, the sun had come out again, and the day was much better than forecast.  I went down the steps by the aqueduct, where you get a decent view back to it.

I stuck to the perimeter path, along by the River Ouse.  The river itself seems ok, level-wise, but some of the streams flowing into it are dry.  At the far end of the walk, there’s a very impressive railway viaduct taking the west coast mainline across the Ouse Valley.

There are sheep and cattle grazing in parts of the park (which is all run by the Milton Keynes Parks Trust), and there were also signs up about not feeding the ponies, although I didn’t see any of them today.

1 mile, 1 lock.