Retirement with No Problem

Rothersthorpe Top Lock to Billing Footbridge, GU Northampton Arm and River Nene. 9 miles 23 locks

Today it was goodbye, or should I say ‘au revoir’, to our lovely friends Chas and Ann on NB Moore2Life.  We have spent the whole of this winter in each others company… I am going to miss them both.  I shall miss my long walks in the company of Ann very much, and I shall miss Chas… now I have nobody to tease! .  Thank you both for making my winter a very happy time, full of fond memories which I will take with me until we meet again in the Autumn. .

Double wammy of sadness for me today, not only turning in the opposite direction to our friends, but daughter Wendie has decided not to come and join us for Easter… pressures of work mean that it will be too much of a rush for the family, and overcrowded roads have put them off for this Bank Holiday. They may join us for a long weekend in a couple of weeks time though.

The Rothersthorpe flight of narrow locks are a delight after the big heavy locks of the Grand Union, and but for the main road that runs along side all the way down and the M1 over the top, it would have been idyllic.  Here the massive ‘tunnel’ like structure that takes the M1 over the canal..

The outskirts of Northampton are not so nice, graffiti just everywhere, even on the lock beams.  We encountered our first yob behaviour since we left the towns of Lancashire last year… a group of youths wanted a ride on the boat, and then later as we dropped on to the River Nene, another group of yobs throwing stones.  The Nene is wide enough to be just out of range…. but we felt uncomfortable, and with the news of the family now not arriving decided to push on through Northampton before mooring.

Here, the approach to Northampton Town Lock, the first on the River.  It has pointed gates on both top and bottom, and once through that, the Nene opened up into a wide river, and it didn’t take me too long to get used to the open expanse.  I was surprised though how big this river was, I thought it would be much narrower.  It was hardly flowing though, such is the lack of rainfall we have had this winter.

We reached our first vertical guillotine bottom gate locks at Weston Favel Lock after taking the wrong path towards it.  I had missed a sign……. well the sign was an arrow… it was pointing in the air!!  But no harm done, there is no flow, so no way would I have ended up on the weir this time! .

After tying up No Problem, we went to investigate how these locks actually worked.  Luckily there was a local to hand, and he explained the procedure.  Well having done one, all the rest today were the same.  I did find that I had to go on the lockside to firmly hold NP close to the side, using both my centre ropes round two bollards to stop her going back and forward as the lock was being emptied at some speed when the vertical gate was raised to let the water out… very fast emptying!

We decided to do a few more, not only to completely clear Northampton, but to clear some rapidly filling caravan and camping sites, and finally tied up just before 6pm, just picking a spot along the bank and hoping it would be deep enough.  I have a feeling we will be doing that quite a lot in the coming months.