Cosgrove to Stoke Bruerne (cruise retrospective)

It was warmer today. It must have been. I only wore five layers of clothing. But the sun was out, the sky was blue, and all was well in our world. Up the shallow Cosgrove Lock, and a stop above for services while Grace nipped into a nearby shop for bread and milk.

Today's journey was very rural. The canal is wide and river-like. There were few boats on the move. Tiny ducklings and coot chicks peeped around their paddling parents. Little lambs and their dams white-dotted the fields, and the fresh, sweet smell of rape filled the air. It was perfect. Even when I had to add that sixth layer!

Thrupp Wharf, Yardley Gobion, Grafton Regis - getting the Regis bit from Henry VIII who owned a manor house there. Six miles of peaceful countryside canal. That's about two hours, remember!

Not knowing what delays we might encounter as we climbed the five locks into Stoke Bruerne, we had lunch at the visitor moorings below the bottom lock. One of the delays might well have been NB Primrose, whom we knew to be ahead of us. We'd passed Foxglove not long before, but they had turned, and were now on their way back to the Wyverne base. But there they were, the Americans, busying themselves with filling their water tank and discarding rubbish at the service point close to the lock. They weren't going to slow our ascent, then. Up we went!

A vollie we met three locks up told Grace that the Primrose crew had seen the flight of locks, asked a lot of questions about it, then decided it was too much work for them. So they'd winded and were ready to follow Foxglove back to Leighton Buzzard. It was a shame, we thought. If we'd been there at the time, they could have come up with us. It would have been much easier for them that way.

Dense, dark blue clouds started to threaten us as we did the locks, and it started to rain as we moored below the second lock down. Excellent timing. And a lovely place to moor for the night. We were only a short walk from The Navigation Inn, and the rain had stopped in time for us to go and enjoy a good meal there later. 

Three photos from our windows

"There's no such thing as bad weather..." (cruise retrospective)

"...only unsuitable clothing.” (Alfred Wainwright) Which is why I wore six layers of clothing today, from T-shirt, through shirt, pullover, fleece, and another fleece to a cagoule. With a body-warmer standing by just in case. And I was warm. But the weather was very cold indeed, and we had several spells of snow and hail, and the wind gusted icily. But there were times when the sun broke through, pulling blue sky along behind it. Weather, eh?

We started today's trip behind a couple of Wyverne hire boats. The first, NB Foxglove, pulled away from the second as they left the bottom of Stoke Hammond Lock. The second, NB Foxglove, was clearly being driven by a novice. No surprise there. Every boater has to have their first trip, and for most, that'll be on a hire boat. It was for us. But what do you do if you're rather more expert, and the newbie is driving very slowly indeed, and finding bridges very difficult? It's very frustrating having to dawdle, even when you're not in a hurry. They wouldn't move over to let us past. The skipper kept looking nervously over his shoulder. We hung back. We didn't want to apply any pressure, to stress him. He's on holiday. He's meant to be enjoying himself. We sighed, smiled, and dawdled.

The two Wyverne boats shared Fenny Stratford Lock, aided by the owner of an old, battered boat moored nearby, and myself. I do believe that the American crew of slow Primrose thought we were paid hands. The two of us had a chuckle over that. They left the setting of the lock to us, and sailed off, and Grace brought Kantara down. The two hire-boats were out of sight by now, but we passed the Americans mooring not long afterwards. It came as something of a relief not to be following them any more.

Milton Keynes was next. I like Milton Keynes. The canal passes almost entirely through attractive parkland and woods. The water's clean, the miles of footpath are clean, too, and there's no graffiti. While there are stretches where mooring would be difficult or even impossible because there is neither armco nor grass verge, there are plenty of very good places to stop for the night, or several days if you wanted to.

But for a change, we carried on out of the city, passed bridge 75 where we've moored several times before, and on to Cosgrove. Here we stopped, just a few hundred yards from the lock.

NB Foxglove passed us not long afterwards. The Americans crawled past two hours later.

Views from our windows