Retirement with No Problem

Rushden to Earls Barton, River Nene, 10 miles 8 locks

We weren’t the first away this morning, nor the second as boats are now moving off the Nene and back on to the system.  We have been leap frogging each other over the last few days, and it has been nice to meet new crews…

Mind you once we were on the river about an hour behind them we had the place to ourselves cruising the 10 miles we only saw one other boat on the move.. I am going to get a shock no doubt when back on the system and having to queue queue again…

There are a number of these lovely pack bridges along the Nene, this one just as we were leaving Wellingborough this morning, but getting through the correct arch sometimes is difficult, this one moreso than any other… the arch I need is right over on the left.

There is no stream on the river at the moment, in fact the Nene is well down on summer levels.. look at the flow over this weir..

A dribble!

This has made it much harder work for us going up the locks.. normally there is so much water flowing over the top of the upper gates that once the guillotine is closed we just sit back and have a cuppa and wait for the lock to fill naturally.  So it was up with the paddles at each of them today…

This is Doddington Lock, normally the water is cascading over those gates..

We stopped at Wellingborough embankment to put on water, and while Vic did that I wandered over to Homebase for some contact adhesive to stick down some cushion flooring under the dinette table.  There was some oak flooring there, but when we had the refit done in May I took it out as the dinette was going to be altered and it them on the roof when we stripped that bit down.. I then forgot to put the planks INSIDE No Problem.. when we arrived back on the boat after our break away they had warped… DOH!!

Anyway, at last I have found exactly the cushion flooring pattern I wanted, so that will go down this weekend sometime..

There are a lot of horses and ponies grazing around the Nene at Wellingborough, some, in my opinion, not very well looked after.. we saw one with a rope round its neck it wasn’t that tight, but someone needs to deal with it..  Another I snapped with the camera as we went by with a ton of those sticky things in it’s tail…

I guess the whole of the tail will have to be cut to get rid of them.. there are some really nice ones out there..

The owners of the cottage by Doddington Lock are very friendly.. there used to be a visitor book inside the control box for the guillotine where you could sign in to say you have passed, but unfortunately it is gone..  but this isn’t…

Over there on the grass is a hose on a reel.. the owner is quite happy for you to help yourself to water if needed.  To get close enough you need to moor on the downstream pontoon for the hose to reach.. very handy if you want to stay a while in this lovely area..

We will pick up a Tesco Delivery here at White Mills Lock before moving off to Cogenhoe tomorrow morning..

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