Thursday 12 November 2009

Tuesday saw us moving on to Stoke Bruerne via the Gayton Junction for fuel, an uneventful journey except for the coming together of us and another boat in the tunnel, it was only a gentle nudge as we had both slowed to 'tickover'.
We managed to squeeze in the last place possible, it was on a bend, luckily there was not any boat movements.

Wednesday was an early start as we wanted to get to Cosgrove, at the lock, at Cosgrove, there was someone on the bank with their arm up in the stop salute, we were already at tickover because of all the moored boats.
Eventually we realised why a very large broadbeam barge had come up the lock and was about to wind (turn round), to give credit where due the steerage of this barge was by tiller and the forward and reverse control was not nearby when the tiller was at full turn, so to watch the athletic steerer run between tiller and speed control was an enlightenment in agility.
We did moor and help him down the lock, which his barge filled.

Thursday we had a walk about near the aqueduct, there were information boards depicting how some temporary locks were built whilst the aqueduct was built, the line of the locks and canal are still visible.
We moved off as shopping was required, a Tesco near bridge 71 was the destination.
Shopping complete we progressed towards 'The Black Horse' (bridge 76) lunch was taken and very good it was too.
The mooring outside had a very large ledge that stopped us getting in close, otherwise we may have stayed the night.
Moved just around the corner but again no possibility of mooring, more ledge, eventually moored just past bridge 77, nice quiet spot, no ledge and to cap it off we had just finished mooring when the rain came down.



A bright start to the day










The aqueduct

This tunnel runs under the aqueduct and is very low.

1 comment:

Alan Fincher said...

Bottle,

I have only recently seen your cruising blog.

Looks like you may be heading into our patch on the GU.

If you fancy a beer somewhere one evening, message me on CWDF.

The crew of 'Chalice'