Thursday August 9th - Braunston Top Lock - High House Wharf

And so to home. After a cracking start we had a long haul down Buckby locks before cruising the last section through Dodford and Weedon to High House in glorious sunshine. Ironic, really, we’ve been crying out for summer weather since I don’t know when and we finally get it on our last day!

Entering Braunston Tunnel

A cracking start – through the tunnel in a shade under 20 minutes without meeting another boat and at top of Buckby within the hour from leaving Braunston Top Lock. Here we were delighted to see ‘The Antidote’ make preparations to untie and so we had company down the locks.

It was a slow old journey though. There was a pair of boats immediately ahead of us with a single boat (crewed by a single handed chappie in front of them. And then behind us came another single boat – the Bromley Youth Trust boat with about 12 strapping teenage boys on board.

By lock 2, the pair in front had decided to split up, so the single handed chap had company, and we decided to let the Bromley boat go ahead of us to pair up with the now single boat. So instead of single, pair, pair, single, we now had three pairs. How’s that for efficiency!

It was slow work with almost every lock having to be filled. There were few boats on the move in an uphill direction – just one pair and a single.

Because of the slow progress we had now been caught up by the Bywater Hotel Boats that we had passed a couple of days ago at Newbold and again this morning below Buckby Top Lock. The addition of their lock wheelers added more of a sense of urgency into the proceedings. While we waited for locks to fill/empty, we caught up on old times and exchanged tales of derring-do from our shared Rochdale experiences!

Eventually we reached the bottom lock and exited onto the Blisworth pound that will take us home. I exchanged a few words with Alison Clipstone at Whilton Marina as we passed – she and Ian are out shortly on ‘Whistler’.

It was then a straightforward cruise to High House in glorious sunshine, and it was this that, despite the lines of moored boats, made it a really enjoyable late morning’s journey.

And then, past Stowe Hill and the caravan field we saw the little mooring basin and the bows of ‘Roding’ and ‘Papagena’ ahead of us and we finally brought the 2012 meanderings to an end. We pulled up to the wharf side in front of the two other boats and tied up.

Mooing at High House Wharf

At just over 940 lock miles, this has been our shortest annual amount since 2007 (the floods year) when we hardly cruised at all. Still, we have plenty of things lined up to do.

We have family visits to fit in, a short break in Yorkshire (to walk the remaining part of the Huddersfield Narrow Canal so we can get pictures of the bits we didn’t do for the IWA talk I’m doing in November), a holiday in Italy in October, research for a book I’m preparing with Jenny Copeland on the men of Weedon who died in the Great War, and………….

And then we’ll have to start thinking about next year’s meanderings!