We had an understanding with a boat that came and moored behind us last night, that we’d go up the locks together this morning. So seconds after I’d opened the back doors, our neighbours appeared, and by 8.15 we were setting off. There was a delay of a couple of minutes while a CRT man ran some water off the pound above the bottom lock, and then we were off. All the locks needed turning, but we made good progress. Our companions stopped in the long pound as they wanted to visit the museum, but we carried on — meeting some volunteer lock keepers at the top two locks. We then moored in the village, as Adrian had a call to do at 10am. We slotted into a nice space, and within a few minutes, all the boats around us had left! While Adrian was on his call, I had a walk around and bumped into Kathryn, who came along for a chat. Before long we were setting off again, through the tunnel and into Blisworth.
We made good progress along the Stowe Hill Pound, with the sun coming out at times.
We made a brief stop at Rugby Boats for a top up of diesel. We took on 50 litres, but the price is still £1.50 a litre. The new houses on the far side of Weedon have come on a lot — at least, some of them have because they’ve already got people living in them. Some of the others are still only shells. The residents of the house closest to the canal waved enthusiastically.
We passed lots of boats going the other way. I got the impression that one man has just picked up his boat from Whilton, because he asked me if he’d passed on the right side! We got to the bottom of Buckby Locks just after 3.30. This was our target for the night, but as it was relatively early and the weather was nice, we decided to go up the first six, especially as two boats were coming down the bottom lock. We had to turn some of the locks, but we also met a couple of boats coming down.
We moored up in the long pound, where it’s much quieter than down the bottom, and we have a nice outlook onto a field of sheep.
16 miles, 13 locks. (33 miles, 15 locks)
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