It’s been a fairly quiet
week moored on the Puddle Banks at Braunston.
Well, it was quiet for me and Buddy taking in lots of walks around the
area. It hasn’t been quiet on the water –
this is a busy place where the Grand Union and Oxford canals join – it’s been
like the M25 of the boat world all week.
Even though we have had
some lovely sunshine we did seem to get soaked every time we went out. Surprisingly
we have only seen a couple of butterflies during the week; quite disappointing.
This is the view out of
the front of the boat and every evening the rooks come out to play. It’s so relaxing watching them wheeling
around and you can actually see that many of them are in pairs as they are now
nesting. They also come out at six in
the morning and we’re convinced they get up when Karen slides the hatch open to
get out and go to work.
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| Our regular evening view of rooks from our mooring this week |
On Wednesday we spent some
time walking along the abandoned railway lines in the area. This bridge over the railway line is quite striking as it is triple
arched and just sits in the middle of nowhere, I suppose it must have carried
an important byway when it was built but it is no longer used.
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| Bridge over nothing carrying nothing |
There is an amazing
archive of photographs depicting the building of the railways around here and
also the early days of their usage. This
is a photograph of the same bridge when the line was under construction in 1897. The rails were roughly laid as these were
used to move men and materials around before the main rails were laid.
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| When the line was built in 1897 - works rails have been laid prior to the real things going down |
On Thursday Mark popped by
on Callisto to top us up with diesel and coal.
His dog is called Cally which is purely coincidental, she was a rescue
dog and came with that name rather than Mark naming her after his boat.
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| Taking on supplies from Mark on nb Callisto |
One afternoon we took a
walk to Flecknoe and when we were about three miles from the boat it started
hailing and we hadn’t taken any wet weather gear as no rain had been
forecast. By the time we got home we
were soaked. Flecknoe is a lovely village, one of those on our retirement
list. It has mellow stone cottages and
no main road running through it. near Flecknoe is a hamlet called nethercote which has a Victorian wall box still in use.
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| Victorian wall post box in Nethercote near Flecknoe |
Sad as I am I checked the
waypoint site and sure enough the box has already been recorded in the section
on Victorian post boxes.
The shower pump packed up
on Friday morning and I was again reminded of how expensive 12 volt electrical
goods are. It always seems a con to me
and I’m sure if I was electrically minded I could convert standard 240 volt
appliances to run on 12 volt. For
example, basic domestic fridges are only a £100 or so but a 12 volt basic
fridge will be getting on for £400.
As usual, Karen worked
from home on Friday and we went for a walk after she finished and ended up at the
Admiral Nelson. It turned out to be the
best evening of the week and we sat outside having a quiet drink watching the
boats go past.
It's now the weekend and we are looking forward to Jo visiting us for a few days
next week on her way back to Edinburgh after a trip to see friends in
Cornwall. She has got a coach home next
Saturday for £11 showing it pays to shop around!
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