The boat's back at its home and so are we at ours

 We had left ourselves about 3 hours of boating to get back to Gayton and so we set off after Chris had a call at 9.00am,  It was a glorious clear sunny morning though still cold.  It was so cold in fact that I had been able to see my breath in the bathroom this morning! It certainly warmed up during the day and by four o'clock it was glorious.  The route between Weedon Bec and Gayton is one we have done often, and so it's very well known to us now.  It was glorious in the sunshine and with fantastic hedgerow blossom. 

There's a boat going through the bridge in the centre of the picture, but the trees are just filling the space weighted down by the blossom.  The canal passes through some open country, and sometimes you can see hills in front and to the side.  There were quite a few boats moving about, but not in this shot!

This is the last bridge we go through before we moor up.  Like so many others it is of course on a bend! 

I had to moor up by myself when we got to Gayton as Chris was on another call.  It's slightly tricky and you have to make sure you can get the back end into the bank and then jump off with the centre rope from there.  There were rings in the ground, so that makes it easier, but the bank was a bit curvy, so the front end was sticking out a bit.  

We stopped for lunch after Chris' call and then went up to the top of the Northampton Flight of single locks to turn around.  
We then did a variety of boring jobs like getting a pump out and diesel and taking our stuff off the boat.  We had bought a fender from a man on a boat on the Trent and Mersey and so Chris fitted that this afternoon.  I helped by holding on to it so we didn't lose it in the canal before we'd had a chance to use it! So then we pack ed all our stuff back to the car and drove home - by a very odd route as the A14 was closed due to an accident.  We came on a B road through very few villages, but it didn't take much longer than the A14 would have done and was probably shorter too! 

So now our trip is over - it's been really good.  We've been to some new places that we've not visited before, along the Soar, and down the Trent and Mersey and the Birmingham and Fazeley too.  We've had some incredible weather with really very little rain.  I really enjoyed our trips out to Lichfield and to the Coffin and Pen museums in Birmingham.  My mission to meet with the BMG Committee went very well and finding somewhere to moor in Birmingham was incredibly easy.  It seems a bit of a shame to be home really, and we look forward to some more boat time, but that's not yet fixed in the diary!

Our trip this time has been 195 miles 7 3/4 furlongs and 201 locks.  That's quite a lot of locks, which we've shared pretty evenly and the 7 tunnels too!  So here's to the next trip wherever that may be!
And




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