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, 117 locks)

Rediscovery Cruise: Day 2

 We were up early and set off at 7.30, on a much brighter day. It took a couple of hours to get to the bottom of Buckby Locks, and a boat was waiting in the bottom lock for us to join us.  It turned out to be a really nice couple who moor at Stowe Hill.  Their dog is a rejected guide dog, rejected because she is too easily distracted.

We met four lots of boats coming down, so didn’t have to turn any locks, and got to the top in around an hour and a half.  At Norton Junction, they turned right onto the Leicester Line while we carried straight on.

We passed three boats in Braunston Tunnel.  At the locks, two boats had just gone down, there were two boats in front of them, and two were coming up.  So rather than turning the lock and adding to the confusion in the pound below, we waited and had lunch.  By the time the uphill boats had done the top lock a Black Prince hire boat had arrived for us to share with.  We met plenty of boats coming up, but by the time we got to the bottom lock we had caught up with the boats ahead.  There was then a long wait for a hire boat to come into the lock to go up.  All in all, it was a fairly slow passage, made much better by chatting to our locking partners.  We made our way through a busy Braunston and turned left at the junction.

We carried on along the shared Oxford/GU section, which was fairly slow because of all the moored boats.  There are fields of crops not yet harvested; at home, they’ve all been done.  At Napton Junction we carried straight on, onto the South Oxford.  We haven’t done this canal since 2011.

We wouldn’t normally have come so far, but we are meeting Catherine and Nigel at The Folly this evening.  It was gone 5pm when we moored up — moorings were tight, but we’ve just tucked on the end before the winding hole, with about 10ft of the boat beyond the no mooring sign — although we aren’t overhanging the winding hole at all.

Added later: we had a lovely evening at The Folly, which is set up with a lot of marquees in the garden.  We were given our own private one!  Food and drink were good, plus great company

18 miles, 13 locks. (33 miles, 20 locks)