Trent trip - day 2

When we first arrived at Foxton, I went down to the shop at Bottom Lock to get some milk. They only had semi-skimmed. Horrible in tea or coffee. The lady serving asked if I was a boater, and mooring there overnight. In which case, she'd order a two-litre bottle of skimmed milk for me to collect in the morning. So, come the morning, I went down to buy it. Different woman in the shop. Knew nothing about the order. No milk for us. Damn! She was very apologetic. I was disappointed. No hot drinks for us that morning then.

About an hour or so later, I got a phone call from an unknown number. I didn't answer, but listened to the voicemail which followed. It was Sam Matts, whom I'd seen the evening before. Would I ring back, please. I rang back.

"Just a shot in the dark here, Roger, but did you order a bottle of milk from the shop yesterday?"
"Yes, I did, Sam." (And what a waste of time that was!)
"There was a bit of a cock-up." (Yes, there was, Sam.) "The dairy didn't believe that we wanted just the one skimmed milk, so they didn't leave it." (That makes sense?) "I rang them up, and they're bringing it over specially. It'll be here by the time you get to the bottom of the locks."

What a strange coincidence. Sam had seen that we were at the top of the locks. He heard from his sister in the shop that a boater had ordered milk from them, but the dairy hadn't delivered it. They didn't know that boater's name. He could have been any one of several who were around at the time. But, of all of those boaters, Sam knew me, and Sam had my phone number. Nice one, Sam!

So we descended the locks on the Thursday morning, under a blue sky and amid numerous gongoozlers with lots of questions and lots of chat.

I got the milk at the bottom, and we moved on. The canal was very quiet. Very quiet. We only met one approaching boat all day.

Teepees...

...set out for a wedding reception

We moored between bridges 76 and 77, a lovely spot on a lovely evening.