Summer cruise with Lady Esther begins

Yesterday we reversed (well John did) from our mooring back to the water point, but when we got under the bridge a boat was using the water point so John reversed a bit further to the one by the Toll House.  After filling up we returned to the mooring by The Boat Inn to await our Tesco delivery.  Braunston is always busy, but..... I have never seen so many boats out at the same time, the sun definitely brought out the boats! Once we were stocked up we set off from Braunston to meet Lady Esther.  We knew Dave & Angie were waiting for us by bridge 100.  When we arrived Dave was cleaning the roof, after a quick hello and discussion we decided to chance getting onto the moorings by The Bridge at Napton.  So we set off in convoy it was still busy in both directions, we were amazed when we got to the moorings and were able to pull straight in with only one other boat for company, this did change later.

Busy Boating

Get that roof cleaned

Look at that sky!

Ridge & furrows fields

John & Dave went to check out the pub to see if they were doing food, unfortunately they were not other than burgers later as they had a band on.   The landlord did however ask if we needed anything from Tesco as they were going, thought this was really good, so Dave put in his order for bread & milk. When they returned, I phoned the Folly and they had also stopped serving food at 4pm, (recession, Bank Holiday Sunday, lovely sunny day!)  We had a lovely afternoon catching up, Dave doing a BBQ, (Dave style!), after tea, we retired, just for a couple to the pub, erm...... much later we came back for coffee on Triskaideka.

The sun dropped behind the hedge so we had to move onto the roof

Dave BBQing

The result

This morning again was sunny, but it was windy and a cool wind, we set off for the services prior to hitting the Napton flight of locks, surprisingly in good shape, no headaches (or none being admitted!).  We hit the first lock with everyone going in the same direction, not a boat in sight coming down.  The pounds were really low at the bottom of the flight and we dragged the bottom of the lock at one point, however as we got half way up the water levels improved as did the traffic, unfortunately, so did the wind.  We cruised from the locks to bridge 130, some of this section is quite bendy and it was interesting at times as the wind was blowing us into the bank and its quite shallow, so we have bumped along at times.

A new born water buffalo, very wobbly on its feet

Angie working hard

Its hard to imagine the HS2 speeding through here

Finally, the May blossom is appearing

The weather forecast is awful for tomorrow but we will wait and see.

Yesterday 8 miles, today 8 miles & 9 locks