Heard a couple of trains during the night but other than that all was peaceful. Mike and Pat moored ahead of us last night but they were long gone before we were about, still we will see them again tomorrow.
We set off at 10 am on a bright sunny morning, the first job was to take water just below Hillmorton lock. While we were filling up Trevor Maggs came by on his ex working boat Corona.
Hillmorton bottom lock just like Claydon Bottom lock is fitted with cast iron gates.
A few years ago one of the other locks had its cast iron gates removed as being beyond repair, these are now on display by the bottom lock with rather a lot of weeds growing round them.
Yesterday when we came down the flight the off side top lock only had one paddle working, this morning CRT where there trying to repair it, they had stop planks (a dam) in the mouth of the lock so they could drain the water around the paddle to carry out the repairs. Luckily there was a Volocky at the top lock controlling the flow of traffic so the single lock didn’t get used out of turn.
We passed one moored boat that had a novel way of charging his batteries, the had married a car alternator to a lawn mower engine, I suspect he uses this set up to save running his engine every day.
We met no more than half a dozen boats between Hillmorton and Braunston, there was more traffic than that just at Braunston Turn with boats coming from both the Napton direction and from Braunston its self.
Just passed bridge 101 we came across a hire boat hard aground with his bows against the off side bank. I tried to pull him off backwards with no success so we ran a line ashore and tried heaving that way, we had a nice little queue behind us by now. The boat swivelled round with no problem, but wouldn’t come off, so I went passed and took his bow rope and tried that way, he was hard on a concrete shelf. in the end I got to bit of an angle and snatched him sideways finally getting him free.
To give you an idea of what sort of day its been here is a cloud photo I took and its nothing to do with the internet.
As we are only going as far as the Blue Lias tomorrow to the Cutweb Internet Boat Club rally we have moored just before bridge 103, this should give us a little over 4 hours cruising tomorrow, long enough to make bread and charge the batteries before we get there.
Today’s Journey 
11 miles, 3 Locks, 1 Junction in 5¼ hours.
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