Stantonbury (lost mooring pin)

Sun almost gone at our Monday night mooring at Stantonbury

We awoke to another almost windless day on Monday which was great as we were due to carry on cruising towards Northampton.  Karen ran back to Leighton Buzzard to get the car and I set off on the boat to get to the northern outskirts of Milton Keynes.

As I mentioned the other day, it’s a slow old chug through Milton Keynes with all the liveaboard boaters that now seem to work in the area.  Mind you, there are numerous bridges, both original and modern, that help make the journey more interesting.  One thing we have been noticing is the large number of new widebeams appearing on the waterway and a large proportion seem to have been built by Aintree Boats.

Aintree built our shell, although we had our fit out done by another firm.  Since buying our boat, two of our friends have also bought new narrowboats from Aintree and, judging by the number of the company’s new boats in the water, we should have bought shares a few years ago.

It took about three hours to cruise the seven miles around the eastern edge of Milton Keynes.  I was just about to moor up when Karen and Buddy appeared from the opposite direction.  After her run, Karen had had a few errands and moved the car to Stantonbury, just timing things right as it turned out.  

Our view from our Stantonbury mooring with the northern outpost of Milton Keynes in the distance

Whilst mooring up I dropped a mooring pin into the water; this was the first time I have ever dropped a pin in the water after countless thousands of times we must have moored up.  Saying that, we have dropped countless other things in the cut; most of which we managed to retrieve including a barrel barbecue, an aluminium windlass [twice] (on which I had put a magnetic hose clip for such an eventuality) and other assorted boating hardware.  The largest thing we have lost and weren’t able to retrieve was a bike from our first boat back in 2011.

We lost it at the top entrance to a lock on the River Kennet where the water was far too deep for us to locate it.  I had unwittingly left the boat in reverse gear and whilst preparing to empty the lock, the boat had pushed open a top gate catching one of the bikes which wasn't securely fixed on the bike rack.  The bike just dropped straight down - the whole thing was like some crazy slow motion scene as we just caught the boat in time before it went cruising backwards up the river on its own. 

I suppose I have to admit to also losing another bike, almost exactly three years ago to the day, on the River Severn.  Again, it was on the old boat and we had our bikes on the roof.  For some reason I hadn’t secured them by padlocking them to the roof and, when pulling up to a lock landing an overhanging tree caught one of them and off it went.  There was no way we were going to find that bike as the river water was so deep.

Fortunately I found the dropped pin after not too much time magnet fishing and with not much swearing each time the magnet attached itself to the metal bank piling.

We stayed in for the rest of the day and by the time sundown was approaching the clouds had rolled away and we had beautiful blue skies as in the picture at the top.

First thing on Tuesday Karen took the car into Wendover for an appointment whilst I took Buddy out for a walk.  He was going to be cooped up a lot during the day as we were moving the car to Gayton and meeting friends for lunch.

On our walk we came across the ruins of an old church which I was delighted to see, having not researched the area in advance.  I don’t really understand why, but I seem to have a strange fascination for abandoned ancient churches considering I’m anti-religious.  It’s probably to do with the awesome fact that such beautiful buildings were constructed entirely by hand so many centuries ago. 

All that’s left of the church of St Peter at Stantonbury

The church was built in the 1100s and fell into disuse in the late 1800s. It was the church of the village of Stantonbury which, by 1736 was a settlement of only four houses alongside a large manor house.  The manor house was destroyed by fire a decade or so later and all that remains are the large earthworks of the fishponds and also the outlines of some of the external walls.  The village had declined to the small number of dwelling because the owners of the manor house had enclosed large areas of land and evicted all the villagers apart from a few who worked on the (new) manor-land.

Another view of the remains…

…and one of the dozen or so gravestones that remain

Just as I got back on the boat I heard the distinctive tooting of the fuel boat and Jules & Richard pulled up to top us up with diesel.  When Karen returned, we drove up to Gayton marina near Northampton where we would be leaving the car until we arrive there on the boat for it to be craned onto a lorry.  Our friends Mike & Lesley (Aintree boat owners) had kindly offered to pick us up and run us back to Milton Keynes, but we changed the plans slightly whilst we discussed where to have lunch.

Mutual friends Chris & Sue had just taken delivery of their new boat, also from Aintree, and were cruising to Long Itchington with their , not so small now, puppy Bracken.  We knew they had left Braunston in the morning and guessed that if we headed over that way, we would just catch them going down the three locks at Calcutt.  As we were parking up at Calcutt marina we could just see them in the distance, coming out of the middle lock, 

Chris & Sue on their new pride and joy

After they moored up, we had a good nose around and were very impressed with a lot of the finishing touches and personal designs they had incorporated.  We then adjourned to the Boat at Birdingbury Wharf and had a good leisurely lunch before Mike & Lesley took us back to Milton Keynes.  Buddy was rapt as Sue had a lamb bone for him which his unloving family never give him 😞

On Monday we cruised seven lock-free miles leaving only 16 miles and eight locks before arriving at Gayton.