Sunday 2nd May.
We have come another HUGE distance today – all of 3 miles! The thing is, we only wanted to move from the building site area into the country really, so we just went as far as was necessary. It has been really cold and windy today too so we didn’t want to go too far.
The first obstacle to be overcome was an electric lift bridge. As we had been moored near it last night and watched a couple of people struggling with the barriers to close the road we knew exactly what to do this morning, so that was a bonus to having stayed there.
The next thing was that this canal is so twisty and narrow too, in places there are only a few inches to spare either side of the boat, literally. Good job it’s not very busy at the moment, so we haven’t met anything coming the other way at an inopportune moment, or at all actually. God knows what it’s like when it is busy!
On top of this, some of the bridges are really low too. We had already bent the hat on our chimney yesterday going under a low bridge and had to take it off! Good job we did as there was about 2 inches clearance for our top box, which isn’t as high as the chimney with the hat on, under one particular bridge, so the chimney hat would have definitely gone for a burton! You have to keep your wits about you travelling on here I can tell you.
We moored up in the village of Milton, just to take George to the pub of course! The Millrace is a nice, friendly pub with very good meat and potato pies (yes we had to succumb) and gravy, which George enjoyed very much. Then we moved just out of the village for the night. It’s nice to look out of the window and see some trees again, after our urban mooring of last night.
Stocton Brook beckons for tomorrow. This is only about a mile and a half from here but there are 5 locks to do!
