The weather forecast for today was for rain in the
afternoon, so I thought I’d get a reasonably early start and then see how far I
got before deciding to stop, the next real place of interest being Fenny
Compton, 9 locks and roughly 9 miles away.
I needed water and rubbish clearing along
with ‘the emptying of the cassette’ first, so at 8am I prepared everything and
then as often happens two boats came along, I waited 10 minutes then walked the
couple of hundred yards until I could see if they had stopped on the water point,
they hadn’t so I walked back and cast off, stopped and filled with water, moved
across and emptied rubbish and loo, just as I was finishing someone was leaving
the first lock (8), so I waved and they left the gates open for me, a good
start
Leaving Lock 8 and Napton on the Hill |
all the locks were in my favour
with just two little waits for people coming the other way through them, at
Lock 14 you can see how black the sky was, you can also see the boats moored in
the Engine House Arm, which was dug to allow boats to bring coal to a stationary
steam engine which pumped water back up to the summit, now it is just used for residential
moorings.
Lock 14 |
Entrance to the Engine House Arm |
At the last lock for
today (16) there was a volunteer lockie so no work for me again, a good easy run of
nine locks but as I was leaving this lock it began to rain, just a shower but
quite heavy, waterproof jacket on.
After the lock there were a lot of boats moored on the right and not much
room and as I came around a blind bend I was faced with a boat heading towards
me, neither of us had sounded our horns, not many people do and although I did
when I first started I have mostly dropped the habit (you do feel foolish sometimes
when no-one else bothers) but in future I will again consider it more often, there
was a gap in the moored boats so with some very careful slow maneuvering I was
able to move into the boat sized gap and as the other boater passed me, move
off again, carefully!
I now had a lock-free
run of about 7 miles to Fenny Compton so I thought now would be a good
time for tea, before I could stop though there was another heavy shower. Having
stopped I thought I might call it a day, but it brightened, so off I went again
passing Paul on N.b. James who runs the information packed Living on a Narrowboat site.
I then passed this interesting little mooring, he’s dug
himself a boat size hole and made good the canal bank after, I hope he’s sorted
out some type of water filtering or that ‘pond’ is going to get stagnant and
very unpleasant especially if his sink discharges into it as most boats do, but
I guess he doesn’t need to pay C&RT for a licence J
That looks odd. |
Self contained ? |
Totals today: 4 miles : 9 Locks
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