It's me! I'm back! Hurrah!

1 to 9 September

We're finally back on the canals, and with enough time and energy to start blogging again. I know I said the National was going to be hard work, but that was ridiculous. St Ives would make a great venue on a dry summer, just as the Nene is a great cruising river ditto. Shame that this summer was the wettest for several hundred years.

Having said that, the locals at St Ives were incredibly welcoming. We seem to have been the biggest thing to happen to them since the last World War. According to early figures, we actually had more people through the gates on each day than last year at Beale Park, which if true is amazing. The Saturday, in particular was very difficult for the visitors, with huge amounts of mud everywhere. By the Sunday we’d got some walkways sorted, and in any event the site was beginning to dry out. There are some pictures of us grafting away on the WRG site – click the link for National Photos.

We remained at St Ives until Wednesday 29th, then went down the Old West River for the night of the 30th and on to Denver Sluice on the 31st. We were booked to cross the next day, but on the lockie’s recommendation, we crossed to Salter’s Lode that afternoon, and ended up overnight at Upwell. We had a meal at the Five Bells – it was not expensive, and very good, which was nice as it was our belated (from 21st July!) wedding anniversary. Apart from that, for the first few days we spent a lot of time asleep when not boating.

Despite a good weather forecast, our aim was to get up the Nene and back onto the canals as soon as possible, and finally reached Gayton Junction last Friday. The last burst was in company with Frank and Mary on Joka, which enabled us to do Irthlingborough to Gayton in two days. For the record, we stopped at:

1st Whittlesey
2nd Ferry Meadow
3rd Ashton
4th Denford
5th Irthlingborough
6th Northampton Washlands
7th Gayton
8th Weedon.

Today we are at the top of Buckby, and plan to go on to Braunston tomorrow. We shared up the Buckby flight with Ann and David on an Alvechurch boat, Pechora Pipit. Their first trip – it’s really good to see newcomers to the canals.

The GU is really busy here – it’ll be good to get further North, away from endless linear moorings and people in very shiny boats chugging by with grim expressions on their faces. We plan to join the Huddlesford Boat Gathering on 22/23rd of this month, so that gives us our next target.