It was quite overcast and murky and much cooler this morning so we both donned jeans and sweaters to start the journey. We filled up with water and John emptied the cassette so we were off in good order. We had a small drama inasmuch as Paddy had been messing about when we were getting ready to go so I left him down in the boat, with the front door on the catch. Somehow he managed to open it and while we were negotiating our way through moored boats on our left and trying to stop to get to the water point and letting boats pass us - again on our left - he burst out of the front doors and leapt straight into the water! I was at the front and yelled at John - he had to turn the engine off and throw himself onto the deck to grab at Paddy who (once again) was not in his life-jacket and haul him out. Luckily everyone else found it amusing and we got back to normal again - albeit with a dripping dog on board!
We stopped at the chandlers in Braunston to get a replacement bit for the light that didn't work in the tunnel as we have a much shorter tunnel to do in the next couple of days - we also bought some different fenders to hang to protect the sides of the boats as we have already lost 2 of the lovely rope ones we had! New ones are rubber and not so attractive but likely to stay in place longer - we hope. Also bought some piling hooks to use when we are moored against metal pilings and a new lump hammer as the last one got left behind in the reeds on the start of the Grand Union (see photos of boat moored in reeds and you may understand why)
Once on our way we negotiated the junction at Braunston and got onto the Oxford canal. This is familiar territory as we did it a number of years ago with Tom and Charlie - it's a beautiful canal - very typical canal countryside and so much nicer than a lot of what we have been through in the last 6 weeks.
We had a good journey through about 10miles of canals without a lock in sight and then we got to Hillmorton - just outside Rugby and there were 3 locks to do - they are rather nice ones actually as there are 3 sets of 2 separate locks so you can have one going up and one going down if necessary. Since they are single locks I am happier and going down always seems easier than going up for some reason. When we arrived at the locks it was manic - about 8 boats waiting to go down with mooring for about 3 so that was interesting, add to the equation that at least 3 of the boats were full of students who were unsure how to manage their boats and had obviously been having quite a liquid breakfast / lunch / afternoon and you can imagine the state of things! All was well though and we survived.
By now it had warmed up and we had changed earlier in the day back into lighter clothes. Once through the locks we found a mooring and are going to stop at Rugby tomorrow for some supplies.
This is the entrance to Braunston tunnel - two boats can pass in it and this is where our lights stopped working - it's over a mile long and more than half of that we did in darkness. See the exhaust fumes outside the entrance!
Beautiful bit of engineering at Braunston Junction.
Nearly our turn and things have got a bit calmer.....
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