Lazy Song

I wanted to be in Northampton on Monday, the Northampton Arm contains 17 narrow locks, the 17^th leads you onto the River Nene and my licence does not cover me for that river ( it’s Environment Agency water not C&RT ) and at the moment I don’t want to go onto it, so I checked my Pearson’s guide and it does not show a winding hole, but looking on Google Earth I can see what looks a winding hole just before lock 17, local knowledge is best so I asked in Gayton Marina and the man there confirmed you can wind a 55ft boat there, I also asked about moorings and was told plenty after lock 13 and plenty just before lock 17, all good so far, I intended to set off today do the first 13 locks and moor up to rest my weary body, then do the last 3 Sunday, ideally I would have done 8 then another 8 but the first 12 are a flight and you cannot really moor in the pounds between the locks.

So at 7:30, early but I anticipated a long day, I headed for the service point to fill with water, empty the loo and rubbish, the tap was a good flow so about 8:30 I was on the move, the first lock had a work  boat slightly in the way and made for a different approach, but all ok, at the third lock someone was approaching, so I helped them through then continued on, at two of locks there are lift bridges, but both were up and looked little used.

Somewhere around lock 8 a boater walked along and asked me to leave all the bottom gates open as he and his wife were coming up and they would leave the top gates open for me, he had walked along setting the locks in his favour until he saw me (he had done about 4) and so I asked him to reset the next one for me, and although he wasn’t happy he agreed to, you should not set locks that far ahead, ridiculous, anyway after I got through 8 and 9 I could see him in 11 so I walked down to meet him at 10 and help him through that one leaving my boat ready in lock 9, he said in 37 years of boating I was the first single hander to wait for him, not surprising if he goes ahead setting locks like that.

This odd pair were adjacent to lock 10, I think, not sure what he was pointing at but it was a nice little area for a picnic by the lock.

On to lock 12 and the M1 traffic thundering past overhead

some local urban art as well, maybe to take your mind off the noise.

So far the Arm had proved to be good, the lock gates were well maintained and the gear worked well, a generally pleasant run down the flight, it was only 11:30 so I decided to carry on the whole way, and a good job I did, after lock 13 nature had the upper hand, with reeds and weeds and plants narrowing the width

and preventing even seeing a possible mooring spot, then I came across this fellow dredging, as I approached the canal was completely blocked as he had a barge alongside him to dump the dredged material into, he moved that and waved me through

Mmmmm.... I wasn’t sure about the gap with all the vegetation.... but slowly through and it was ok.

When I got to the winding hole things got worse, two C&RT workboats were blocking it, they moved for me but not really clear enough as they wanted to be together, bless them, so I ended up doing a 12 point turn, as I’d passed the available moorings I could only see ¾ of a gap and thought I might have to head back and do some gardening to find a spot, but the fella at the end was sitting on his stern deck and I politely asked if he would squeeze up so I could get on the end, he was happy to and he even thanked me for making him do something instead of falling asleep.

So I am here, a great day with some frustration and some joy, I have a BBC signal and the WI-FI is good, now where’s the wine glass.

Total Today: 5 miles : 16 locks : 2 lift bridge

Ahh the title, I did a timelapse video of me setting off and going through locks 1 and 2 accompanied with music by Bruno Mars (Lazy Song) it's good, but evidently too big for blogger at 125Mb there is a limit of 100 so I'll see if I can doctor it down and post it later.