 |
| Heading for Soulbury on Sunday |
We had a
good journey back down the M1 from Yorkshire on Thursday and were home before
it got dark. We had a surprise when we
arrived back at the boat though, spot the difference…
 |
…no, it
wasn’t the blue skies nor was it the fact that the wind had died down. Sadly, our bikes had gone.
Whoever
had taken them had undone the restraining ropes to the cover and taken that
too. The ropes were left on the back
deck but there was no sign of the bulky bike lock; it had obviously been cut
through and probably thrown in the cut.
It looked like they had tried to remove the bike rack too but that lock
was clearly too strong.
We always
take two or three wheels off the bikes when strapped on the back to avoid them
getting damaged by other boats or if we get into difficulty in locks. We keep them in the cratch, so I immediately
went down to see if they had gone too.
Imagine my surprise when I found they were still there – the thieves had
stolen two frames, one wheel and a bike cover – must’ve looked strange walking
down the towpath with that lot.
Each time we
met different neighbours over the next few days we asked if they had seen
anything suspicious, but none had. We
reported it to the police and will probably claim on our insurance as a theft
rather than a burglary (break-in) doesn’t impact our no claims bonus and
neither does it attract an excess payment from us.
The wind
was still up on Friday morning as we heard the unusual sound of a boat on the
move, heading up from Leighton. It
happened to be a CRT boat pulling two barges which looked quite a feat
considering the strong winds.
 |
| The towing boat is nearly out of shot but you can see four or five CRT guys standing on the back |
We had to
pop over to Wendover to pick up a few things that had been delivered to Karen’s
mum but first I did some magnet fishing.
Karen had had the brainwave that the thieves may have been so pissed off
that there were no wheels on the bikes that they just threw the fames in the
cut.
I had a
good fish around but, apart from the usual nuts and bolts etc., found no bike
frames. After putting the magnet and
line away I went back on deck to trim my beard.
When I was emptying the beard trimmer the cutting mechanism fell in the water,
so I had to get the magnet out a second time.
This time, fortunately, I was successful.
 |
| This panda parked next to us in the boaters’ car park tickles us every time we see it |
One of the
things we picked up from Ann was a new coal bucket; our previous one had
developed some rust holes in the base, and we were fed up with constantly
clearing up coal dust. Karen had been in
touch with a boat trader called Kay who makes and sells canal arts and crafts
from her boat Pea Green (Facebook: Kay's Canal Crafty Arts from nb Pea Green). She had agreed to paint a
new bucket for us with chalkhill blues on and we have to say that we are really
pleased with it.
 |
| Our new coal bucket (picture from Kay, the painter) |
After
seeing Ann, we went into Aylesbury where we had a few bits and pieces of
shopping to do. On the way we called in
to see Judith and have a quick catch up with how arrangements were going for
Mum’s memorial ceremony which is being held on Sunday week in Gargrave village
hall.
We had
other odd jobs to do on Saturday and missed the start of the first rugby match by
a couple of hours. We had thought this
might be the case so had made sure we weren’t near radios etc. where we might inadvertently
hear scores. We saw the first match on
catch up and in the end watched all three matches on catch up without knowing
any of the results in advance – a beauty of staying indoors on the boat 😉
The winds
died down during Saturday night, so we set off towards Milton Keynes on Sunday
morning. We were expecting to see lots
of boats on the move as it was the first day without strong winds for what felt
like ages. As it was, we only saw five
and four of them were widebeams.
|
| Setting off on Sunday morning |
As usual,
it was great to be on the move again and after a mile or so we reached the
three locks at Soulbury.
 |
| In Soulbury top lock |
Not
surprisingly the pub by the bottom lock is called the Three Locks and is
popular with gongoozlers especially during the summer. The only people outside on Sunday when we
went through were smokers.
 |
| Going down the bottom lock outside the pub |
We stopped
for water after leaving the flight of locks and then slowly made our way to Fenny
Stratford on the outskirts of Milton Keynes.
I say slowly because a lot of the way was in and out of gear on tick-over
as so many ccers now seem to moor throughout Milton Keynes.
The lock
at Fenny Stratford is one of the very few in the UK that has a swing bridge
over the top which clearly involves extra effort. This time we were lucky as a boater was
wheeling a couple of bags of coal across the bridge and offered to operate the
bridge whilst another offered to close the gates up after us – very nice,
especially as it was suddenly quite blowy and exposed at that point.
The skies
darkened as we left the lock and we decided to moor up for the day, not before
I got soaked by a hail storm as I hammered the mooring pins home and made the
boat safe for the night.
 |
| Our mooring for Sunday night at Fenny |
Two things
we had planned to do before leaving for France, visiting Bletchley Park and taking
the boat into Northampton, have obviously gone by the board with the recent
turn of events but there’s always other times😃
On Sunday
we cruised six miles down five locks.
No comments:
Post a Comment