Boats, Bridges and Bends!

Monday 14^th August 2017

Napton to Fenny Compton

10 miles, 9 locks

We were off by 07:30 (I know that is late for some of you, but not for us!) this morning and we were in the first lock by 08:15 having filled the water tank, moved under the bridge to the service wharf and deposited the rubbish and the 'yellow water' in the elsan disposal point.  

The catches to hold the paddles up on the top gates on the Napton flight are new to us (we were last this way in 1998 and my memory is not that good!)

The views are wonderful on this canal - miles of wide open countryside.

At one of the locks I noticed this creature in the distance.  At first I thought it was a bull alone in a field,

however as I looked to the right I realised there was a large herd of something, but what?

When I zoomed in I realised (with the help of my Pearson's guide) that these are water buffalo which have been farmed in Napton for many years.

Going back to the one on its own - I think there was something wrong with it which is why it was alone.  I could see it from a couple of locks and her stance looked strained and apart from the odd flick of her tail, she did not move

 Looking closer I fear that maybe she has given birth to a dead calf, but nothing we could do about it apart from hoping the farmer would be round to check on his herd soon.

A couple of locks later and here he was

A pirate boat for our granddaughter, Evelyn, yesterday and today one for her big sister, Molly

the Hippie Boat

Mind you I think some of their wares are probably more suited to Evelyn

We were happy to see that there are quite a lot of stretches of good armco along the flight, so plenty of mooring opportunities.

Lock 15 and a sign that has escaped the cull when C&RT took over from British Waterways.

Lock sixteen is the last one and we had only seen one boat coming down in the two hours it took from bottom to top.  At the top there was one going out

with three waiting to go down. We made the right decision to leave early before the queues had time to build up.

From there on it was a about a 7 mile cruise under around 13 bridges, most of which are on quite tortuous bends.  At virtually every one we met at least one boat.  At one point I thought I had Victor Meldrew on the back deck! This canal is very bendy!  We lost count of the boats that were travelling north (we are going south) and we can envisage the huge queue there will be at the top of the Napton locks if they are all going down!

We made it to Fenny Compton before lunch and moored the other side of the bridge in this picture.  I had looked through when we arrived, but there were no spaces.  We were on a bit of a bend, so not ideal, but beggars cannot be choosers.  Mid afternoon we went for a walk with Monty and on our way back a boat left the space we are now in.  Probably not our first choice as it is quite near to the pub, but it is straight and the only space available, so we moved hoping no one would come the other way and beat us to it!

The last time we were in Fenny Compton was in August 1998 when Chris and I had moved Sue and Ken's (Boatwif and the Captain) boat, nb Cleddau from near Milton Keynes to Fenny Compton.  Back in those days we all had work to fit in to our boating lives and they wanted to start their summer holiday near to Cropredy so they could attend the festival.  For many years they had said we could borrow Cleddau, but for some reason we were reluctant - it seemed a very big favour even though we knew they meant it.  When they asked us to help them out and move her we jumped at the chance and went via Stratford - a very large diversion!  We had 10 days of wall to wall sunshine and when they took over from us they had several weeks of rain and wind!  How young we all look!