After a late night and a deep sleep, we hauled ourselves out of bed this morning and prepared for the short hop to Crick. We took the opportunity to dump rubbish and take on water near bridge 19 at Yelvertoft and then we were on our way again, braving the cold gusty wind along the way. We passed nb Cyprinus Carpio again between Yelvertoft and Crick but the same as last week there was no sign of its owner Lee, probably too early in the morning for him!

An hour after setting off we were mooring again, this time opposite Crick marina. We took a look at ‘The Moorings’ restaurant/cafe/shop before walking into the village itself and after a quick stop at the Co-op we went into the Wheatsheaf on the opposite side of the road. May 11th is Sue’s birthday and that gave us cause to celebrate so we enjoyed a bottle of wine with our delicious two course lunch. After a couple of hours spent relaxing in the Wheatsheaf we wandered back to the canal. We had already decided to move on a bit so we untied and headed for the tunnel as soon as we got back to the boat. We reached Watford locks around four-ish and after passing through the top lock, waited for the lock keepers to bring four boats up the flight. Our timing was perfect, while we sat inside with a cup of coffee each, the heavens opened and dumped rain and hail on everyone in the area. The sun came out as the last of the four boats passed out of the staircase part of the flight and we made our way down in relatively pleasant conditions. We cleared the bottom lock with a little help from the lock keepers and the crew of the next boat which was ready to ascend the flight.

We tied up for the evening outside Weltonfield Narrowboats and thus avoided the heavy rain that arrived half an hour later. With the fire lit our boat was cosy again and we settled down for the evening on this the last night of our holiday. We have left ourselves with just the tunnel and locks at Braunston to complete our journey so unless anything out of the ordinary happens, this blog entry will be the last for this trip.