Blowing a Hooley.

Hi Friends.

What a night..... No not that sort of night ;0).

Both Keith and I were tucked up in bed just after 9.30pm, because we were both tired. I think once again my head hit the pillow and I was out for the count but unfortunately the wind was so strong, it kept waking me up for most of the night. Keith got up twice, once to move our fenders off of the roof incase they got blown off of the roof and secondly to open the slide, because the fire was roaring away, making the cabin rather warm, this was all due to the strong gusty winds blowing up Hadar's rear. Whilst we were awake, I made us a cuppa and checked the fire, but the fire had burnt itself out, so there was very little left in the bottom.

Even as we got up there was still very strong winds, so I cleaned out the back stove fire and left it out, with the thought of lighting it later on once we had descended the locks.

We set off early to go down through the locks, so early the locky hadn't unlocked the top lock when I arrived there. Fortunately when Hadar is fully loaded she handles easily in the wind as she has a lot of boat sitting in the water, 2'6" along the whole boat, and as the sheeting is sloped, unlike the steep cabin sides, the wind just glances off it and over the top. Keith managed to hold Hadar in the lock entrance whilst the locky Gerald opened up the locks. We waited whilst he also filled a couple of the side ponds, because they were a little low on water. We were soon setting off down the flight. The wind was gusting so much that it almost knocked me off of my feet as it cut across the flight. The wind was not cold, just very strong. Hire boat NB Lady Dubois followed us down the flight, she had just come back from being painted in her new livery. As we approached the bottom lock, I saw another hire boat coming through the swingbridge. I explained to the steerer he would have to moor up as there was a boat coming down behind us, but he had no control over the boat in the wind. Eventually he wrestled the boat on to a mooring in front of the Foxton Locks Inn, and we could finally get out of the bottom lock. Keith swung the boat around in front of the pub and on to the water point at the bottom of the inclined plane, where we unloaded coal for a customer who lives down the arm. Having delivered her coal, I then opened the swingbridge for the hire boat Lady Dubois, who was being taken back to Market Harborough to join the fleet. Keith then reversed Hadar out of the arm, whilst I opened the swingbridge again for us. We are now moored at one of our favourite moorings just through the foot swingbridge down the Harborough Arm, where we will be for the weekend.

Since being moored up, the wind has really got up, so much so we have waves on the canal. I am thinking of offering the ducks surf boards.

The one really great thing about the strong winds is the twigs that are falling from the trees. These twigs are an ideal size for my back stove fire, so I will be out with my bucket over the weekend collecting sticks.

I am off now to see if I can buy a TV paper, so I will say cheerio for now.

Chat soon xx