After spending the weekend in London with Abi, we are moving out of Brinklow Marina today to continue our journey. The plan was to go as far as Braunston and moor up for the night and then tomorrow would be the final journey to Calcutt Boats. We set off at around 9am as we needed to be at Braunston early in the afternoon to get a visitor mooring for the night.
We left the marina and headed towards Rugby. We had to travel through the Newbold Tunnel but this is one of my favourite tunnels as it is very short and is usually lit up with lovely colourful lights. We had not met any boats on our journey to the tunnel but as is usual when cruising we met two narrowboats coming through the tunnel as we approached. We had to wait for them both to come through before entering the tunnel as it is only wide enough for one boat at a time. Unfortunately the lights were not lit but it is still a nice tunnel. Going through the tunnel brought back a few memories as we have done this stretch of canal a few times on Maya our old boat. However it was at Newbold Tunnel, outside the Barley Mow pub where we got our diesel stolen from Maya. That was a valuable lesson as we now have a padlock on the diesel cap.
After Newbold tunnel we headed towards Rugby. The canal goes through the centre of the park area with some lovely moorings but it was very busy and we wanted to carry on until we got to the visitor moorings at Braunston.
We eventually got to the Hillmorton Locks which were also very busy with boats coming up and down. Once again we met some lovely people on the locks and today I met two beautiful, playful spaniels. We also met a very selfish person who instead of waiting for the boats to come into the lock from the previous one they decided to refill the lock so holding everyone up, wasting water and it is just not in the spirit of cruising. Anyone who knows me will not be surprised that I informed the owner of the boat that this was not acceptable and told him he was very selfish. This was echoed by another boater who was also waiting for the locks.
After Hillmorton we carried on to Braunston, passing Barby Marina where we had moored Maya for a few months. The marina was only just being built but it has now been completed and looks very nice.
Braunston Junction is an iconic junction for narrowboats and its church tower stands high on the hill alongside the windmill, so you can see it in the distance as you approach the junction. We had hoped to moor at the first set of visitor moorings so we could walk into the village and enjoy a drink at the canal side pub, however it was so busy that we could not find a mooring so had to head under the bridge onto the Oxford Canal and try to find a mooring at the visitor moorings under the bridge. These were also busy but they were also not very good moorings. Not only did you have to use mooring pins (we hate mooring pins) but the tow path was so overgrown that you would have had to have used a boarding plank to get onto the towpath which is not ideal for the dogs. So we headed on up the canal in search of some better moorings. We found a lovely stretch of casual moorings just before bridge 99 where other boats were moored so we settled here for the night.
Once again the blackberries were in abundance on the side of the canal so I picked enough to make blackberry turnovers for dessert much to John's delight.
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