Leaving the bottom of the lock flight you get the best view of the famous Napton windmill.
Reaching Brauston we were hailed by no less than four blog readers! Thanks all of you for saying “hello” and happy cruising to you all. After a lightning dash to the chandlery at the bottom of the lock flight to get a spare Squirrel stove door glass we joined up with another boat (delightful father and daughter combination!) for the journey to the top of the locks.
With five locks under our belt and one to go we had a bit of “excitement”. A hire boat exiting the lock turned across our course and, in trying to avoid a collision with it, we picked up this go cart tyre on the prop! The hire boat then decided to reverse into us and, with no power available due to the tyre round the prop, we couldn’t avoid colliding with the second boat out of the lock. Having been knocked at the stern by the hire boat and giving the second boat a resounding clunk we felt a bit bruised! Thankfully no one was hurt and no one had any sense of humour failure. After getting “Chance” to the bank James had a bit of a job prising the tyre off the prop – but he did, and here it is!
The Braunston tunnel brought the first opportunity for us to try out our new ‘micro’ LED headlights. Doug took instructions to adjust them so they don’t blind oncoming boaters. Tiny as they are they are quite remarkable and improve tunnel visibility no end. Being angled well to the right we hope we’re not going to blind anybody!
With the Braunston events behind us we turned left at Norton Junction and chanced the flight of locks at Watford Services. We were aware of the amount of traffic leaving the Crick Boat Show this weekend and weren’t too surprised to find we had to wait a bit for a passage up.
As it turned out we had a two hour wait, as twelve boats came down through the staircase. We passed the time by helping the two,rather tired, lock keepers out (57 boats descended the flight today!) We did our bit, chatted to a lot of very tired boaters who’d been waiting to come down a lot longer than we had, had a few laughs with the lockies and various show boat crews and finally took our place for the 16 meter vertical rise to the top.
Doug’s at the back somewhere!
“Chance” buried deep in the flight.
Our resting place for tonight beyond bridge 8 on the Leicester Arm, enjoying the evening sunshine still intact and looking forward to another day tomorrow.
Locked down Foxton yesterday with one of your sister boats, Limoux. The owners had joined the brand new boat three days previously at Crick and had had 500 people through it there (we made it 502 while we were waiting to enter flight!)
ReplyDelete