Flecknoe (Missing buses and fond farewells)

We had planned to cruise to Braunston on Friday so we could catch a bus to Daventry in the evening to meet up with Mike and Aileen.  Karen and I both really enjoy being moored at Flecknoe and independently came to the decision to stay put and walk into Braunston to get a bus instead.

Our Flecknoe mooring

Karen had some bits of work to catch up on so I took our dinette foam over to Sarah who has a boat yard at Cathiron, north of Rugby.  Sarah is also a seamstress and has made covers for our seating. 

When I got back, I made a yellow butter chicken curry for the slow cooker.  Always a sensible thing to do so we have something substantial to eat when getting back from seeing Mike and Aileen.

Just loving the view whilst cooking

After lunch we went for a circular walk around Grandborough and Sawbridge.

Karen taking the micky out of me for tucking my jeans in my socks, “Compo style”

During our walk Sarah rang to say the seating was finished so when we got back we popped over to pick them up.

Not easy to get a good picture of the dinette as it is such a small area, but this is the seating on one side

Our bus to Daventry was due to leave at 5 and as we were rapidly running out of time we drove to Braunston with a plan to leave the car there overnight.  Braunston is one of those villages where the bus companies have been rationalising.  There used to be six or seven bus stops in the village, but now there is just one.  The other stops haven’t been removed but have signs saying they are not in use.  It took a while to find the right stop as it was dark.  The bus was late and after it was 20 minutes late Aileen texted me saying their bus from Weedon hadn’t turned up yet either.  We gave it another 10 minutes and as it still hadn’t arrived, drove into Daventry.

We arrived at the Early Doors microbrewery just after Mike and Aileen.  It was a great pub – more like a front room with a wooden trestle for serving beer.  Karen doesn’t drink real ale and as they didn't sell lager we decided that she would drive home and so we needn’t worry about buses or taxis.  It was just the sort of place we would go to with my sister, Judith, and Nigel when they visit as they are both into their real ales.

After getting our drinks they presented us with some boaty stuff that would be no use to them in France (their boat is being shipped out there on Monday so they can start a new life on the waterways of Europe).  They gave us some keys that operate the locks on the River Nene and some unused pump out vouchers.  Pride of place was a hardwood hand spike that is used to operate some of the paddle gear on the Calder & Hebble navigations in Yorkshire.  The Driffield canal is the only other waterway in the UK that uses something similar.

I felt a bit of a local pikey walking through Daventry High Street with this hand spike when we went home

It was really sweet of them to pass these items on and we have a great farewell evening.  Well, it’s not really farewell as we will go and visit them in France but need to get Buddy a passport first.

Aileen, who writes their blog, and I couldn’t believe it in the morning that we hadn’t taken any farewell pictures.

Saturday looks like being a fine day judging by the sunrise this morning