There was a great deal of rain during the night together with some thunder. Consequently we had to spend some time this morning drying out the bilges and mopping the decks! We set off at 10.45 to tackle the Northampton Arm. This is about 5 miles and 17 locks which takes the boater up to Gayton Junction on the main Grand Union Canal. The latter has double locks but the Arm has only single locks. It was opened in 1815 and the decision to only put in narrow beam locks was a penny pinching decision which has come back to haunt both cargo carriers and leisure craft.
We passed the Carlsberg Brewery and we had been able to smell the hops when we were moored in the Marina.
The first few locks had an enormous amount of weed around the upper gate and Graham together with other boaters spent time trying to pull it out of the canal. As a result the first 4 locks took ages.
One of the bridges had a lovely mural depicting the history of Northampton. It was difficult to get a good picture.
Ghostly boat people sculptures are found at Bridge 6. I’ll have to research their origin when we are home.
Also there is a tent here and sure enough Leon appeared again between here and the next lock. He lives in the tent and he was helping another couple down. He is now very brown with the fantastic weather and luckily was again wearing shorts!
The clouds today were very spectacular and luckily we had no rain.
So finally we reached the last lock and obviously Graham is looking pleased.
To celebrate our anniversary we bought ice creams from Gayton Marina as we sailed by and are planning to eat out tonight at the pub at Bugbrooke
Wharf.
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