It had seemed like a very long week, having made business trips to Yorkshire, London and Birmingham so it was off to Braunston on Thursday after work. We had dinner at the Boathouse pub before getting to the boat around six. We had brought the ‘new’ chairs with us so spent an hour swapping them over with the old ones. That might seem like a long time but it did involve a bit of carrying between car and boat as well as dismantling the old and assembling the new.
Next morning, I was up and about and off to work, leaving Sue to give the boat a thorough clean through. I returned to the marina at four and by five o’clock we were out on the cut. Sue had some news about our mooring, following a visit to the marina shop earlier in the day. When we return on Sunday we will be berthed on the same pontoon that Phoenix III occupied but on the other side where Caliburnum used to be before it was sold last year. It won’t change our decision to leave the marina in the autumn but it will make the remaining months at Braunston easier for access to the facilities. The main thing is that we will have ringside seats for the historic boatshow in three weeks time.
We motored on around Braunston turn in the direction of Napton and found a great mooring close to bridge 103. We spent the rest of the evening just lounging in the cratch or as Sue has taken to calling it, the conservatory!
Saturday morning brought heavy rain, so heavy in fact that by eleven o’clock we were pretty much resigned to staying put for the day. An hour later and the weather had changed so we decided to untie and press on. Of course there was no pressing reason to do so, it was just about playing with the boat and all too soon we reached Napton. We turned Caxton and tied up for an hour, the sun was out and it was hard to believe that only a few hours earlier we had been sitting inside being battered by the rain. Our rest over, we untied again and started our journey back to Braunston, the weather was absolutely glorious and after we passed under bridge 103 we saw that the spot that we had occupied the night before was still vacant so we pulled over, tied up again and enjoyed another sunny evening out in the cratch conservatory.
Sunday brought more blue skies but since we knew that we were only 90 minutes away from base, we were in no hurry to set off. Eventually we did set off though but only as far as bridge 99 where we stopped and had one of Sue’s succulent cooked breakfasts – Mmmmm
We did more lazing in the Conservatory and then set off again around half past one, this time we only got as far as the Boathouse pub mooring where we pulled up again and spent a couple of hours more in the cratch / conservatory (delete as applicable). We’re going to eat in the pub in a while and then return to the marina where we will stay overnight before going home and then to work in the morning.
Of course this means that we have slept more than half of the week on the boat rather than in the house and whilst that was inevitable at some point, we hadn’t really expected that it would happen as soon as it has.