Thursday 9 April 2009

To Thrupp

Wednesday 8th April 2009

Another windy day, but with blue skies and scudding clouds. The banks of the canal were thick with butterburr – which I know best as the huge rhubarb like leaves of summer, but which flower in towers of pink clusters earlier in the year. Our plan for today was to get as far as Thrupp – which Nick Atty said would take around 9 hours. We set off about 9 am – with Alan doing most of the steering. I decided it was time to do some washing, so once the water had heated up I started to wash our clothes. As I’ve said in an earlier post, we have only a very small twin tub washing machine – but it worked fine.

Banks covered with butterburr







Interesting dishes/ antennas








David trying to use the footholds on the quadrants of a lock - has the balance beam been shortened or did the maintenance crew have no idea what they were for?

We passed through stunningly beautiful countryside and arrived at Thrupp a lot earlier than we had expected. So we visited the services, and then, having moored up I did some baking, and some general clearing and cleaning, and washed the muddy footprints off the roof of the boat and gunwales. David and Alan had showers using the water from the calorifier (which didn’t really quite last through for both of them), and I had a shower using our new morco – fine, no problems.
Alan repaired the puncture I got working up the Napton flight, and cycled off to check out the area – and met up with Bones and Maffi who were going off to see Proper Job.
After dinner – to the pub.
Distance: 15.7 miles; Locks:10

Total Distance:106.9; Total Locks: 79

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