Wednesday 29th March
Today we have travelled 7 miles and 8 locks, from Stoke Bruerne to a mooring near the Great Ouse Aqueduct, between Cosgrove and Old Wolverton, on the outskirts of Milton Keynes. We are overlooking the lake and caravan park. Including a stop for water at the top of Stoke Bruerne locks and a stop at the sanitary station at the bottom, this journey took about 5 hours.
Once again it has been hot and sunny, pity it is all going to go down hill at the weekend! We stopped in the village of Cosgrove to start with, while Barbara went to the shop at the caravan site (closed until April) and checked out the moorings where we are now to see if there were any spaces. Meanwhile we took George to The Barleymow, via a very convenient horse tunnel which goes under the canal, thus negating the need to walk back to the bridge.
While we were at the pub B and B moved up to these moorings and when we got back we moved up also. We have decided to stay here tomorrow and move up to Old Wolverton on Friday so we can go to Tesco’s or Asda for fresh supplies before beating a hasty retreat through Milton Keynes.
We will be making use of our day off tomorrow. Since going through the dripping Blisworth tunnel the boat is filthy so I will have to clean it – again. I will also have to effect some running repairs to the paint work we did recently because a load of it got rubbed off by a bend in the moorings at Stoke Bruerne. And finally, I’m afraid it can be put off no longer, so while it is still warm enough to let the fire go out, we are going to have to clean the chimney properly, aaargh!
