Thursday 5 July 2012

Yesterday evening as we were sat on the front deck eating our dinner in the warm sunshine we were treated to a short display by the Red Arrows and I hadn’t even told them I was coming. Later a hire boat went up through the lock and into Brandon, but I think they only went just above the bridge before coming back and locking down again.

As it didn’t look like rain I slapped a bit of primer/undercoat on the rust patches that I had treated on Tuesday.

Yesterday may have been birds and the Red Arrows, today was rain and Horseflies.
When we went out this morning the roof of the boat was covered in small dead flies, the weather was cloudy, warm and very humid, not conducive to putting a colour coat over my undercoating, so that will have to wait.

We left at twenty past ten heading up towards the weir and then driving the stern into the lock entrance, allowing the flow to carry the bows round and downstream,  this meant we were well clear of the cruiser on the end of the moorings. No sooner had we cleared the moorings and the Horseflies started to attack us. They were unrelenting until we were almost at the aqueduct when it started to throw it down with rain, even so the flies kept the pressure on. It was here that we caught up with the EA weedcutter, luckily he turned round as we approached to work his way back upstream so we didn’t get stuck behind him. The rain didn’t last  too long but it was never far away. We pulled over to try to examine the Stop Lock but the water was to shallow to get close, but it could only have been one set of gates  more like a flash lock as the stone work is very short.

At Botany Bay I attempted to get up the arm to the sluice but the weed was making it hard going so we backed out again, we will try in the autumn or spring when hopefully the weed growth is less.
With the very clear water on these rivers weed growth is quite a problem and it grows very rapidly.

We passed under a very substantial farm bridge just as a spray unit was passing over, when we came up yesterday there were three 4X4 crossing, needless to say one found a puddle just as we were underneath.
We stopped at Little Ouse services to fill with diesel at 90p per Lt. and it started raining again. Once out onto the Gt. Ouse we headed for Denver, the sunlight picking out the silos in the distance were quite impressive.

Just prior to Denver there are some cows on the bank and regardless of whether they are brown or black they have a white bar along their spines, any one know what bread they are.

Once back at Denver I contacted the lock keeper to find out locking times to Salters Lode tomorrow and it looks as if we should be away about 11 am, its a big tide so we will have to wait for some water to flow out until Paul can get his gate open. This evening has been the best part of the day ending in the most glorious sunset.