Day one - Saturday. Leaving the marina (eventually).

We got to Wigram's Turn Marina a little bit too early as Saros was still being worked on when we arrived, but it didn't stop us loading our vast pile of stores at the front of the boat. In due course the engineers finished and we completed our loading and locked the car. Settling down to sort everything out we discovered all the things we'd forgotten: coffee, sausages, baked beans, money, and probably a few other things. At least we did have milk and instant coffee so settled down to watch the Boat Race with a warming dose of caffeine. The race was entertaining, to say the least. Barbara (Oxford supporter) gave up watching as soon as Oxford were out of it with only eight rowers (oars) while Charlie cheered Cambridge on to an all too easy victory. 


As there was plenty of daylight left and we wanted to move on towards the Ashby Canal for our first excursion, we set off towards Braunston,. We soon discovered that it was a popular day with canal boat hire companies and that there were dozens of beginners just setting out causing significant traffic queues by cruising so slowly that they got a train of five or six boats behind them getting very impatient. Fortunately, our snails turned off or stopped at Braunston and we were able to move a bit faster - 4mph instead of 2mph! 

Some people really don't look after their boats, do they? On virtually every trip we do on the canals, we come across boats like this, left to rot. I have quite a sizeable rogues gallery of such boats now. 


In due course we got close to the Hillmorton Lock flight and moored for the night so that we could be one of the first boats through in the morning.