Having realised we weren’t going anywhere for at least a couple of days, it was easier to get some sleep last night. I spent the first part of a sunny morning walking to Earls Barton the long way round, thus avoiding the soggy flood meadow. This involved going back up river to White Mills Lock, and walking along the road into the other end of the village.
It was very quiet at 8.15 on a Sunday. The Londis I found wasn’t open, so, forgetting where the Co-op was, I slogged up the hill in the middle of the village to the newsagent I had used yesterday, where I got a paper and some milk. They only had basic bread, so I didn’t bother to buy any. We have some nice part baked ciabatta rolls in store, and we can use those today.
All in all, I was away from the boat for about 90 minutes. Getting back, I checked the EA recorded announcement line, and got no change on the Strong Stream Advice. The head gauge has stabilised at about 30 cm.
By afternoon, the flood meadow was drier, and we both walked across it to look at the water pouring through the mill sluices. I took some photos of it, and of a dragonfly hanging from the tip of a piece of grass:
The rest of the afternoon was spent polishing brass, doing the blog, reading and surfing the net.
Monday 23 July
Before we took our walk yesterday afternoon, Sheila had tied the centreline to a bollard on the lock landing, just for extra security while we were away from the boat. Lying in bed this morning, I heard a weird noise. Investigating, I found that one of the bullocks grazing in the field had discovered that it was ideal for scratching the top of his poll. He and I gazed at each other through the study porthole for a bit before he wandered off and I staggered back to bed.
Last seen peering through the porthole
We both went into the village this morning, and Sheila showed me where the Co-op was. We did a bit of top up shopping and got back to the boat by about nine o’clock. Shortly after two EA guys turned up in a Land Rover and opened the top gate paddles, so that even more water was pouring through the lock.
They explained that the storage reservoirs upstream were now full, and with more rain forecast, they needed to run a lot off, so were opening absolutely everything they could. They couldn’t give an estimate of how long it will be before the river reopens – it all depends on the weather. The water level duly dropped for a bit, before starting to rise again.
After lunch I took a walk downstream to Doddington Lock to see it in its reversed state. I took a couple of photos, but the lock is on private ground, and I didn’t like to trespass too much.
The afternoon was a bit of a trial, hanging around with not a lot to do bar watch the river levels rise slowly. Our water tank level is down to 20% so we’ve brought a bucket of river water on board to use for flushing the loo. Later in the day some kids came down and hung around near the lock and then wandered off across the meadow. They didn’t look particularly threatening, but it makes us more reluctant to leave the boat unoccupied since there’s no other boat by us. A boat which has sunk in the floods in Bancroft Basin in Stratford, after it drifted under the road bridge there and got caught, is thought to have been cast off its mooring by kids.
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