Braunston (reliving memories)

We had a gentle cruise to Braunston during Thursday.  Braunston grew up as a canal village in the late 1700s and into the 1800s and sits on the junctions of the Grand Union and Oxford canals.  The stretch of canal through the village is the busiest in the UK and it certainly felt like the M25 today.  

 

As we have travelled through Braunston several times in the past we didn't take many pictures but here is one from a couple of summers ago when my youngest, Polly, took my Dad (when he was 85) in our kayak.

Here are a couple of the quieter moments we encountered on our cruise yesterday.

This area of Northamptonshire is what we call a ‘retirement tick’ – we would include the villages around here as potential places to buy a home for retirement.  The yellow Northamptonshire sandstone that many houses are built with gives a really mellow feel to the buildings.   

Because Braunston was a major canal village the graveyard contains the remains of many boaters.  I read that cholera came here in 1834 which was very early for outside London and Newcastle (the ports where it arrived from abroad).  Apparently a local woman washed bedding from a working boat that had come up from London.  The bedding was infected and the lady caught the disease and died; she was the first of 19 people that died from cholera in the village.  In all 90 villagers out of a population of 1,400 caught the disease.

On our journey to Braunston we passed what must be the shortest narrowboat we have ever seen - it even has a stove!

Within five minutes of mooring up Buddy was fast asleep on the towpath.

We took him for a walk in the evening sun and Karen took a nice picture of a Speckled Wood basking in the sunshine.