Stoke Bruerne

We left Weedon Monday morning after I had been to the post office to get the mail. At long last we have our license displayed now .

While at Weedon we popped into the pub for a meal on Friday evening (Heart of England) and had a very nice meal. This pub offers 2 meals for the price of one you pay for the most expensive, Paul had BBQ chicken and I had salmon, we got to the pub around 6.30 which proved a good move as by 7pm the place was heaving.

We moored up Monday by bridge 44 so we could have a reasonably early start to negotiate the tunnel. Had a chat with a BW man who was doing his boat check, we said we were heading down the GU and he advised us to steer clear of Cosgrove and Black Prince Bridge said there were some "new age travellers" there who were causing a few problems have any of you out there any comments to make on this?

We left the mooring this morning around 9.15 quite early for us stopped at Gayton for water etc. then carried on through the tunnel. As we have never been in this direction before this is virgin territory for us. I have taken a complete dislike to tunnels but at least Blisworth is straight which is more than be said for Braunston. I find it so disorienting but we now have a high beam torch that can be pointed at the wall (this is my job) to give us a better idea of distance, coming through we passed two work boats both of them having high beams lamps with the steerer so that is one thing we have got right.

We got to Stoke Bruerne top lock and as is my luck we had to wait for two boats to go down and then nothing was coming up, so I had to fill the lock with an audience of about 20 people we had the lock to ourselves but at least I had some help with the opening and closing of the gates. Once through the top lock we were on our own but again the lock was set against us but because of the seepage it was nearly full so that wasnt too bad. As it was nearly lunch time and the dogs needed a walk we decided to moor up for the night between locks 2 and 3 this proved to be a wise move as it is now raining quite hard and I must say there is a definate nip in the air after seeing the weather forecast it would appear there are some wintry showers on the way. Must make sure we get some more coal and diesel soon.