Thursday 16th May
It has been a glorious day, warm and mostly sunny, although it did cloud up a bit this afternoon. We have travelled 8 miles and 6 locks from Napton on the Hill to Braunston. We had a bit of a problem as we exited lock 13, the front of the boat went up in the air almost and we were grounded! I had to open all the paddles on lock 13 to let some water down into the low pound. Someone was coming up the locks and was just about to fill lock 12 so we had to stop them until we were refloated.
These locks leak like sieves so it’s no wonder they are all empty in the morning and the pounds are low. Apparently the top lock was fixed last year and doesn’t leak but the others really need doing. Anyway, we didn’t have any further grounding problems and after reaching the bottom of the flight and doing loo and water emptying and filling we were off to Braunston.
After we passed Napton Junction we were aware of the fact that we were being gained on rapidly by a Rose Narrowboats hire boat. They soon caught us up so we pulled over to let them go by – after which they slowed right down of course! Before we got to Braunston I got off to walk round and suss out the mooring situation. We are carrying on on the Oxford Canal towards Hawkesbury so we didn’t really want to have to go right into Braunston to moor. We would have liked to have moored somewhere between bridges 90 and 89 but inspection proved the moorings along there to be full. As it happened there was only one space free along the whole stretch between the junction and bridge 89. This was on the 14 day moorings just past the sanitary station so we got in there sharpish!
We had a few things to get from Midland Swindlers, oops I mean Midland Chandlers so we went over bridge 90 and up the road. After going to M C we went to the shop in the village and came back via The Boathouse where we sat outside and watched the world go by for a while.
We had planned to go to Warwick next but have found out that a friend of ours is going to have an operation so we are going to meet them at Hopwas next Thursday in order that we can catch up before he goes in to hospital. To that end, tomorrow we are going to Hillmorton.
