As mentioned at the end of the last blog, I was down south visiting family and friends for a few days, and this time Gary stayed on the boat.
I stayed with Mum and managed to fit in getting the car MOT’d, meeting with girlfriends for a catchup and haircut, a meal out with stepson Matthew, an evening and meal with Aunt Julie, and catching up with brother Terry and Sister-in-Law Wendy, and their family! Phew!!
Whilst at Terrys, I had a guided tour of his railway!
His attention to detail is terrific – see the lights on the station and the fire in the waiting room!
I came back to the boat on Sunday and found Gary waiting at Braunston – he had decided not to sail off without me!!
After dropping off the car again, we were ready to move on Tuesday – and the weather was with us.
Braunston Church looking good in the sunshine.
And just after the bridge we saw these snowdrops!
We headed off towards Rugby – aiming to get to Brownsover in one go, to give the batteries a good charge up before the weather turned worse again.
Of course the good weather didnt last, so we stayed at Brownsover for 3 nights which gave us plenty of time to visit Tescos and all the other shops for a good mung round.
The 5th was Garys birthday and we visited the Harvester for a very good meal!
By the time we left on Friday all the rain had made the water point a bit difficult to use so we decided to fill up at Hillmorton instead!
As we went past the Brownsover mooring we saw the canal had started to overflow into the car park area from the new overflow drain! It hadnt been like that when we pulled away to turn round!
As we went past the golf course we couldnt see anyone playing water golf!
After filling with water at Hillmorton, we headed up the locks and found a CaRT guy running water through he locks from the extremely full Braunston pound above.
We pushed on, again wanting to get a good charge into our batteries before having to stop to wait out the next band of bad weather. We passed this strange boat!
We managed to reach the Onley moorings at about 4pm so decided to stop there for the weekend to wait out the weather.
On Saturday the wind was so strong we had big waves on the canal!
We kept expecting to see the ducks surfing past! We felt like we were still on the south coast!
Sunday was our wedding anniversary, we sat out the weather and were sent a lovely rainbow.
Monday it was time to move on again – before the next storm arrived! We headed towards Braunston, then turned and headed to Wigrams marina to top up with fuel, and then headed back up to Braunston again – a nice run of about 5 hours to top up the batteries again!
On the way we had more showers (what a surprise) but did see another fabulous rainbow – shame the camera (or me) cant catch them very well!
When we pulled in to Braunston the 14 day moorings were full, so we moored up at the pub as we owed ourselves an anniversary meal!
On Tuesday, after a visit to the shop, we moved the boat all of 300 yards to just past the bridge, ready to sit out even more bad weather!
They have been busy in Braunston making some new gates and stiles – special lifting ones for dogs!
So here we sit, with more wind and rain and thinking we made the right decision to live on a boat as the rest of England slides underwater!!
Gary is struggling to keep our diesel refleks lockgate stove alight – these gusty winds keep blowing it out! Has anyone got any tips to help please.
