Leighton Buzzard to Great Seabrook.

6.33 miles, 9 locks, 4hrs.

A chilly morning, a real bite to the edge of the breeze.

Approaching Church lock.

Jo lock wheeling at Ivanhoe locks.

Keith.

Willowbridge Marina to Leighton Buzzard.

5.67 miles, 5 locks, 3hrs.

Fog and ice was the order for this morning’s cruise.

Only a thin layer of ice to start with.

Bottom of the Soulbury 3 locks.

Top lock of the three. Having moored up at Leighton Buzzard we did some food shopping at Tescos before lunch and then we had a walk around the town.

Tuesdays is Market day which is very handy.

All Saints church.

Major restoration work has been done and is still is on-going, but is nearing completion.

Keith.

Cosgrove to Willowbridge Marina, Milton Keynes

12.7 miles, 2 locks, 4hrs 50mins.

A sunny if chilly day. The River Great Ouse has calmed down a lot since we walked to the aqueduct Friday.

The above photo was taken Friday, lots of flooding.

This was today’s photo as we crossed over the aqueduct, vastly different.

There are many boats now moored in and around Milton Keynes, so we carried on to Willowbridge Marina where there is deep water and a well made towpath. There has been quite a lot of cutting back of trees on both sides of the canal through Milton Keynes, and a lot of back filling behind piling, especially at Campbell Park, which desperately needed it.

Keith.

Additions to our Coaster and Place/Mouse Mat Range.

We have added the following new coasters, which are also available as Place/Mouse mats, to our range of products:-

The whole range can be viewed on our business website.

Keith.

Stoke Bruerne to Cosgrove.

6.2 miles, 7 locks, 3hrs 5mins.

Another pleasant days cruise.

Stoke Bruerne top lock.

Lots of lovely sunshine to hopefully dry things out, especially the towpaths.

Approaching Cosgrove, we haven’t been this far south since 2010, nearly 3 years ago.

Keith.

High House to Stoke Bruerne

8.9 miles, no locks, 3hrs 5mins.

A colder day than yesterday, but a good cruising day, especially with the smell of sausages cooking in the back cabin stove oven wafting up from the cabin, mmmmmmm.

Approaching Gayton junction, one day we will actually go down the Northampton arm and onto the River Nene.

Approaching the north portal of Blisworth Tunnel. Having moored up we walked down and had a cuppa and chat with Geraldine and Michael on the Cheese Boat.

Keith.

Watford Lock, To High House

8 miles, 7 locks, 5 hrs 25 mins.

A very pleasant days cruising, the lack of any wind made it feel warmer than it was.

The fields covered in a thin layer of snow.

Approaching Norton Junction.

Taking on water above Long Buckby top lock.

Anchor Cottage in a wintery setting.

Jo topping up the stove. having moored up at High House we walked back to have a cuppa with David and Elaine on nb Patience to catch up with them.

Keith.

Snowy Watford Locks

The view from Hadar’s boatman’s cabin this morning.

Keith.

Norton Junction to Watford Locks

2.07 miles, no locks, 55 mins.

The towpath where we were moored overnight has become extremely muddy and slippery, Paddy returned from his morning walk plastered in mud. So we decided to move to the bottom of Watford locks where there is a good towpath, a very pleasant mooring, if a tad noisy from the M1 motorway, but despite how close we are to the motorway it isn’t too bad, at least we are not up to our knees in mud here.

Keith.

Back Onto the Leicester Arm

0.13 miles, no locks, 15 mins.

Following our visit yesterday from the electrical engineer, who has carried out some work on our electrics, we moved this morning back onto the Leicester arm, so we are away from other boats and houses so we can run our generator for a few hours to give the batteries a good charge, and once in the “Float” mode I will set the Invertor/Charger into “Equalization” mode, which runs for one hour, and then see how things go, but as things stand it looks very much like we will have to return to Market Harborough to get another set of batteries, the engineer was fairly certain that the new one’s we fitted before Christmas are not performing properly.

Keith.

Leicester Arm to GU Main Line

0.13 miles, 0 locks, 10 mins.

An extremely short journey this morning. Yesterday afternoon we had a visit from an electrical engineer to test our electrics which are still playing up, and found a couple of problems which he can sort out for us, but we would have to wait a few days, he probably has other work booked in before he can return to us. However he did ask us if we could move through the junction to just above Buckby top lock so he could get his vehicle close to us upon his return to be it easier to do the work he needs to do. When we had arrived at Norton junction Monday we did look to see if there was room above the lock, but there wasn’t, however this morning there was so we moved around the corner and moored up and now just have to await his return. Hopefully it won’t be too long!

Keith.

A Present

Whilst we were frozen in at Welford, Gary from the top lock coffee shop at Foxton delivered this very nice ribbon plate to us.

With ribbon added and hanging in our boatman’s cabin.

Keith.

Crick to Norton Junction

5.37 miles, 7 locks, 3hrs 15mins.

A very windy day today, but we set off for Norton Junction.

First lambs of the year.

Taking on water above Watford top lock.

Working down through the Watford staircase locks.

It makes a nice change to have a full 3G signal here at Norton Junction, perhaps I can catch up with some uploading of photographs, and news from the past couple of weeks.

Keith.

Bridge No.33 to Crick

6.2 miles, no locks, 2hrs 30mins.

Overnight the canal had dropped in level and we were slightly aground, but I soon had us on the move. We soon came across patches of ice on the canal.

Crunching through the ice approaching Crick.

Keith.