Lower Shuckburgh (Why do we feel so shattered?)

Heavy rain was forecast for Wednesday morning so we had a restful time reading on the boat waiting for the rain to stop.  It stopped just before noon so we set off for the Oxford canal.  There were a lot of reed beds on this part of the canal meaning we had to go extremely slowly in case a boat came in the opposite direction.

Even though the rain stopped and the sun came out it remained quite windy.

We went up the three locks on the Calcutt flight, sharing the first with another boat.  When we got to the second there was already a boat in it so we let the boat we had shared with go ahead.  We then went up the last two locks on our own.  Locks are one of the danger areas on a canal so you have to keep your wits about you.  As soon as something breaks your routine then that is when something is more likely to go wrong.  Having been through nearly 1,000 locks since November we have a well established routine.  As we went through the first lock we got out of our routine as we let the other boat go ahead.  Consequently we forgot to check the bottom paddles were closed on the second lock and were wondering for ages why the lock was filling so slowly.

After a couple of miles we hit the Oxford canal at Napton junction where we turned left towards Braunston which is all familiar territory to us as we have cruised around these parts a few times.

These private moorings were in a nice quiet location and were filled by many ex-working boats.

We moored for the night near a place called Lower Shuckburgh.  It was a bit like when we used to moor on the Kennet & Avon - lots of vegetation and having to use a gangplank.

In the evening we took Buddy for a four mile walk and felt shattered when we got back to the boat. We're used to long walks and being outside nearly all day every day but still get surprised when we feel tired - we put it down to the change of environment and routine when we went to Norway.

Our tomato plants survived being abandoned whilst we were away so we were back to salad for lunch and Karen made a good tomato and fresh chilli (boat grown as well) based sauce to go with our fish for dinner.

This was the view out of kitchen hatch in the evening when the clouds had nearly disappeared.