High House to Stoke Bruerne.

Travelled 8.9 miles, passed through 1 tunnel, in a time of 3 hours, 5 minutes.

Having gone to bed by 9.30pm last night due to a bad head and no I had not been drinking, I think all this stuff to do with our batteries and inverter/charger has been getting to me and this headache has been hanging around. I slept like a baby waking at around 6am, with Keith also awake I made us a brew followed by doot step toast, smothered in butter and marmalade, which was devoured sat up in bed watching the news and weather. By 8am we were up, the bed was rolled away and pushed into the bed ‘ole. Paddy was eagerly awaiting his run up along the towpath, which was not to bad under foot, this was mainly because we had had a frost and so the mud was hard under foot.  By 9am we were getting ready for the off, as we stepped off the boat a fisherman was walking down the path and was setting up his gear along side the boat, as if to give us the hurry up to move. I said “Good Morning” to the gentleman and got a grunt back. Clearly he fishes here a lot and likes this spot, but we were going to move off in our own time and his moving up and down was not going to hurry us. At 9.15am with no need to hurry as we were only cruising to Stoke Bruerne. It was cold with a biting breeze burning into my cheeks.

The sun was doing its best to pop out, but it never quite made it and so the whole cruise was a tad chilly.

Before Bridge 43 a small plastic cruiser has sunk, this Dragonfly did not fly away. I will send in a report to the C&RT to make them aware it is there, but I dare say the data checker will have clocked it.

Gayton Junction where we met two boats, one coming through the bridge ’ole and the other coming out of the Northampton Arm. There have not been to many on the move due to the weather, and the ones we have seen are probably out because it is half term.

We arrived at Blisworth and a welcome “Hello” from Tom (Mac) on Mona Lisa. Hopefully we will get chance to hat to him and Pam on our return journey.

In to Blisworth Tunnel, so I went down into the back cabin, to sit in front of the stove, I needed to check the sausages I had put in for lunch to be honest  my toes were freezing so it was a chance to give them a warm up. Poor Keith got soaked from the ventilation shafts which had water pouring from them, he could have had a cold shower if I had past him the shampoo out to him. Out the other end we met Mike on the trip boat, so he must be busy over this half-term. We moored up in the spot we moor for the village at war weekend, lunch was made and enjoyed before we locked the boat up and headed down the towpath to visit Geraldine and Michael on The Cheese Boat. We spent a couple of hours chatting about anything and everything and not once were toilets mentioned, which is always a usual topic of conversation amongst boaters. We both love Geraldine and Michael, they are such an amazing couple and they sell wonderful cheese and chutneys. Whilst we drank coffee and chatted, snow began to fall again and it started to lay, by the time we said “Cheerio” to them both the snow was coming down quite fast, so it looks like we may stay put tomorrow.