Autumn cruising to Birmingham

I've noticed the autumn colours are showing themselves and lots of leaves are blowing through the breezy air these days.

We have joined the River Canal Rescue as a silver member - to cover both of us if one person is away. This covers us if we breakdown, we can call and they send out an engineer who will either fix it and get us on our way or tow us to the nearest boatyard. They will also convey us to our home mooring. This is a very good idea as we are doing lots of cruising these days and putting the boat and engine under pressure.

For the time being we are running well and getting along fine. But at some point we do need to see a Lister engineer because there is something worn in the gearbox. As we are still on a schedule this will wait until we arrive in Birmingham hopefully in the next week.

Since Boxmoor we have been cruising each day for up to 8hours non-stop and it has been tiring work. We cruised through Berkhamsted and up to Tring Summit where we struggled to find a suitable mooring as the water level had really gone down. There is a constant issue with the water supply here as every time a boat crosses the summit it uses nearly 200,000 gallons of water! We ended up stuck at the stern and with some help from passing walkers, we managed to dis-lodge from the shallows and cruise along to a concreted mooring point.

We moored at the summit overnight which it is my favorite spot to be. All kinds of trees line either side of the valley giving a vast canopy and interest for exploring. Delia and I went in search of fire wood and found plenty. Delia was so excited arriving in a wood that she ran up a tree! Funny girl.

Here is Delia the pickle, caught walking along the gunwhale, just the right size for a purdycat.

The following day we passed through Marsworth locks and all the way to Linslade. We spent the night at Linslade and the next day used the local launderette and grocers, having a day off from cruising.

We set off from our mooring and just made it through Leighton Lock at Leighton Buzzard before British Waterways were doing an emergency stop on a lock to try and repair a broken paddle. We cruised on through Soulbury three locks, Stoke Hammond Lock passing Fenny Stratford and through Milton Keynes. We had cruised 16 miles straight.

Leaving Milton Keynes the next day we reached Stoke Bruerne Locks and unfortunately we arrived after 4pm and the locks were locked shut for the night due to water level shortages.

So, we moored up for the night.

I pulled out my bike and cycled up to the village to collect a lovely take-away curry from Spice of Bruerne, the local Indian restaurant.

The next morning the atmosphere was dramatic as there was a strong haze of fog and steam rising from the early morning dew.

We worked through Stoke Bruerne locks and Blisworth Tunnel which on this occasion seemed to pass much quicker than the first time. And I steered through and passed other boats inside the tunnel without any problems. We moored up at Blisworth as they have a Post Office that I needed to access and so we called it a day.

Yesterday we cruised passed the villages of Gayton, Bugbroke, Nether Heyford and Weedon. It was a blustery day and there were lots of boats moving about making maneuvering all the more tricky along the windy canal. We worked Buckby Locks a flight of seven and took the GUC mainline towards Braunston at Norton Junction. After a mile the cloak of night had come down and it was time to moor up before Braunston Tunnel.

And this is were I write this blog post from. It is Sunday and after being woken at 7am by 30 or so fishermen wittering on about camouflage as they dragged their poles and boxes of maggots along the towpath I didn't want to exert myself. So it's a day of rest and absorbing our achievements and delightful views of gently swaying trees.