Friday 7 September 2007

Surprise! Surprise

6 Locks, 6 Miles. Now moored at Leighton Buzzard.

First thing this morning I was having a doze while Dot was busying herself for the day when I was abruptly awoken by Dot conversing with the crew of a passing boat. It was Narrowboat Helen Louise with John and Elizabeth Bolton from Blenheim, New Zealand aboard. John had contacted me back in NZ for information about narrow boats as he was looking into buying a boat. He forwarded some pictures of boats he was interested in and his son in the UK was going to have a look at them. I must say that the boat he bought looks very nice. Well,after about a half hour John and Elizabeth had to push on as they had a fair way to travel so we did a quick photo shoot and said farewell. Next time hopefully we can spend more time together catching up.

John and Elizabeth Bolton on N/b Helen Louise

While Dot had good Internet reception this morning she did a few jobs on the computer that had been needing attention. In the meantime I made the most of the delayed start with some window cleaning and a spot of fishing. Talk about luck of the devil, first cast and I hooked this large Bream. Now my landing net is 17 inches across and this fella would have been a good 16 inches in length, shame I don't have any scales to weigh my catch with. Perhaps I should write to Santa as it's getting towards that time of year again.

Derek's catch of the day

As we had no travelling companions the Soulbury flight were slow going but we got there in the long run. On arrival at Leighton Buzzard we just managed to squeeze into the Tesco shopping mooring without upsetting the usual fishermen who persist on fishing in this location. They even park their cars in the Tesco car park so they don't have to walk too far. Talk about laziness! After replenishing the larder we cruised about half a mile and moored up opposite a new block of 2 bedroom apartments which were only in the final construction stage when we passed through here last February. They all appear occupied now with new scaffolding being erected just to the south ready for another block to be built.

Tonight we received an email from Keith and Dave from nb Tanzanite who we passed near Stoke Hammond lock with us heading south and them towards Fenny Stratford. Sorry we missed you and glad you enjoy our blog. Hopefully we meet up again, give us a shout earlier.

Total of 628 locks, 848 miles, 25 Tunnels, 37 swing bridges and 19 lift bridges since Nov 2006

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