Cosgrove Wednesday 3 August 2016

As I said yesterday, everyone keeps telling me these moorings above Stoke Bruerne Locks are always empty now, wrong! There were 15 boats along here last night, there were 2 moored  in the first pound and there were as far down the second pound as we could see, a lot different from about 4 pm when there were about 6 above the lock.
We ate onboard with an Indian Takeaway from Spice of Bruerne whit was very nice, but one thing to take note of is that they charge a premium of 2% for credit card purchases.

We were off in quite good time and as we approached the lock the Volocky was setting it for us, I was all set to fill with water at the top and wait for a boat to join us but he said the boat ahead was waiting at the next lock, so off we went with his help. When we arrived at the second lock there was not one boat in the second lock waiting, but two, a tug with a small butty. For a while it reminded me of boating with Thorn and Persephone. We had a good run down the flight meeting boats at every lock except the bottom one, we had to wait sometimes for the upcoming boats but overall it made things much easier. One of the moorers in the second pound was the Narrowboat Trust with their boats Nuneaton and Brighton. 

We both stopped for water at the bottom of the flight, luckily there are three water points along here even if there was a hire boat at one stopped for coffee.

There was plenty of water coming in from the pump at the River Tove with its upturned outlet and cap to stop a fountain.

We stopped for lunch an bout an hour before Cosgrove just after passing the ice cream boat.Pushing on after lunch we moored on the first mooring south of Solomon’s  Bridge in Cosgrove went for a short walk, first to show George the horse tunnel under the canal and then on to the Aqueduct where after crossing the river we walked down towards the rive, I didn’t realise there was another horse tunnel under the canal here as well. The Aqueduct looks much more impressive from down here than it does the canal, maybe tomorrow we will have a photograph of Harnser crossing.

When we walked back to the boat the only other boats there was the pair we shared with earlier, all the rest had left. We moved forward a bit as we had been moored under the trees where we were, we may move again later as the pub sign the other side of the canal squeaks rather.

Today’s Journey   6½ miles, 7 Locks in 4 hours.