Look East: Day 7

It rained in the night and was still raining this morning — but there was no wind at all, which was a relief.  We were up and about relatively early, so decided to set off at 7.30.  As we reversed out of our spot, Mark appeared from Wychway to ask if we minded company, so while we set the lock they also set off and joined us.  There was a potentially nasty incident in the first lock.  As the lock emptied, Briar Rose’s baseplate got caught on one of the chains down the side of the lock near the bow, as we began to tip over at an alarming angle. It then slipped off, so the boat righted itself — although not before lots of things had been tipped off shelves inside.  Amazingly, nothing was broken.

The rain came and went, and was never particularly hard.  We went through some very pretty locks, but nothing photographs very well in the gloom.  Hopefully, it will be brighter when we’re on our way back.  At one lock a couple of boats were just coming out and hadn’t yet emptied the lock behind them, so that saved us a few minutes.  We had lunch of a mug of soup on the move.  There are numerous churches along the river, but the most impressive is Fotheringhay.  We’ll aim to stop here on the way back.

The last three locks of the day, Elton, Yarwell, and Wansford, all have strangely angled approaches, with the lock at right angles to the lock chamber.

For a good few miles, the river forms the boundary between Northamptonshire and Cambridgeshire (although Pearson points out that it’s really Huntingdonshire), but once through Wansford we were in Cambridgeshire proper.  We were aiming for the pontoon moorings at Wansford Station, and they turned out to be empty, so there was room for both boats.  The station, on the Nene Valley Railway, is just across the road.  We had been on the move for eight hours.

21 miles, 11 locks.  (66 miles, 58 locks)