Rediscovery Cruise: Day 22

It rained on and off pretty much all last evening, and there was more heavy rain in the night.  But by the time we set off at 8.15 is was clear and sunny, but quite chilly.  Adrian walked down to set the lock while I brought the boat.  The stretch between Slapton Lock and Church Lock looked particularly good this morning.

The pub at Grove Lock, The Grove, always looks attractive with it’s hanging baskets with narrowboat brackets.

We stopped on the water point at Leighton Buzzard to fill the tank and start some washing, and Adrian popped to Tesco.  None of that took long and we were soon on our way, passing Wyvern Shipping — looking more empty than we’ve ever seen it before.  Sometimes it can be a job to get past with hire boats triple breasted.  Today there was just one boat in, and it had only just arrived back.  The reports of hire fleets being booked solid appear to be true.

We’ve only seen two Wyvern boats further south, so we expected to see plenty passing us today — and we have done.  A boat was just coming out of Leighton Lock meaning we could go straight in.  At the Three Locks at Soulbury a boat was just coming up the top lock, and a volunteer lock keeper went to re-open the middle one for us.  We were joined by another boat going down, and with a boat also coming up the bottom lock we were down in no time.

We moored at lunchtime at a favourite spot at Stoke Hammond.  We were glad to get inside, because the wind had got up and it had a real chill to it.  This afternoon I have sorted a problem which manifested itself on Day 1 of the trip.  I noticed in Blisworth Tunnel that our red nav light wasn’t working; it turned out that the back plate had split and the whole thing was hanging off.  Somewhere down the Thames (Shepperton, I think) I took it off completely and we’ve just had a couple of wires sticking out.  I phoned Willowbridge to see if they had any in stock, and when they did I walked down there to be them.  They are exactly the same size and shape and the screw holes are in the same place, which made things a lot easier. After a bit of a faff getting the short wires connected, we now have LED nav lights.

We have put the chimney on, just in case we decide to light the fire later.  Summer really has come to an abrupt end.

9 miles, 7 locks.  (287 miles, 190 locks)