September Cruise: Day 15

It was very autumnal as we set off about 8am, and not in a particularly good way.  It was grey, a bit chilly, and blustery.

We made our way along the summit, through Fenny, and hardly saw another boat.  The HS2 works seem much more prominent when you’re going this way, with a huge embankment across the countryside, and the new bridge across the canal.  Then when the line passes close to the canal there are more concrete supports.

We got to the top of the locks at 12.15, and found ourselves seventh, yes seventh, in the queue.  It seems everyone was going our way, and all arrived at once.

We were there for about an hour, gradually moving along as boats went down.  We had our lunch on the towpath, while hanging on to the centre line.  Then it was our turn.

There was another queue for the third lock down, which has only one top paddle working.  The other problem was that with several pounds near the top where people moor, more boats kept joining the procession in front of us.  Still, it’s a very pretty flight, and the sun came out.  It was still very breezy at times though.

Today, the water buffalo were all walking purposefully across their field.

We got to the bottom in just under four hours, which is incredibly slow.  But we’d had nice chats with the people ahead, on a boat called Willow.  One uphill boat had a grey parrot in a cage on the stern.  I wanted to see if the Merlin bird song app could identify it — but the parrot talked rather than making bird noises, first saying ‘hello mate’, and then ‘let’s have a cup of tea’!

We moored up just round the corner from the bottom lock, where the towpath hedge was laden with blackberries.  It took out a container and soon filled it, so there will be apple and blackberry crumbles on the menu in the next few days.

13 miles, 9 locks.  (181 miles, 120 locks)