The big move day 8 Elton

The boat we towed yesterday afternoon with no drive called out and joined RCR who fitted a couple of lengths of 15mm copper pipe in the feeds to his calorifier, the old flexible ones had sagged onto his gearbox coupling and worn through. He then traced the lack of drive to a lack of oil in the gearbox

Yesterday evening we walked into the village and had dinner at The Chequered Slipper in the village of Ashton. The history of the village is very interesting and worth a few minutes read.

Yesterday I posted this photo of a Kite which I thought was supporting wing tags, thanks to a posting from Dr Neill it looks as if this bird was tagged in Rutland If you follow the link you will see much more information on tagged Kites.

We set off from our mooring in the weir channel at about 10 30 am but it was 11 am by the time we cleared the lock, ahead of us was a Narrowboat with 2 ladies who pulled there boat into the lock on ropes and a cruiser sterned Narrowboat with a couple, the husband was 89 and was giving me nightmares. Both boats were well tied up before anything else happened.  He had his own handle to fit the lock wheel but he needed spanners to remove it, so once the lock was open for them to leave we had to wait while he removed it. he then insisted his wife through the centre line over the other boat so he could pull her across once the other boat had left and so it went on. I was pleased there were two of them and I didn’t have to share with ether.
Once we left the lock I went at canal speed to ensure they got well ahead and when we arrived at the next lock they had gone.

There was no one moored at Fotheringhay above the bridge and only a few below. One of the boats moored below was nb. Moriarty  who are the new occupants of our old mooring at Napton. As we approached Warmington lock we could see the two boat that we had been following above the lock, but they were both moored on the offside with no one on board, so I expect they have walked over to Eaglethorpe for lunch. The river use to run through Eaglethorpe in a large loop but the lock has now bypassed the village by quite a bit.

We carried on to moor just above Elton Lock, I think we have moored on the wrong side and should be on the same side as the old mill, but we have stopped just before the lock landing as the water is deeper and the land flatter for getting Magic on and off.

The weather today has been cool with a few light showers and very little sun shine, the other thing we have noticed today is more irrigation pumps sitting on the bank ready to water the crops.