Today was planned to be around six and a half hours.
It ended up being a couple of hours longer. Too much for one day!
I was off at 07.05. Everything was still and quite.
It was not raining like most of yesterday but unfortunately the weather seemed unpredictable.
Starting this early ensures the canal is empty. I did not see another moving boat until 08.40 which is one hour and 35 minutes.
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The first lock a long cruise. It was Cosgrove which was two hours and 20 minutes from my starting point. Getting into the lock proved rather difficult as a trip boat was blocking almost all the mooring before the lock and a few strong gusts had Hallmark all over the stream. I finally managed to get alongside the ‘offending’ boat and go and sort the lock.
The highlight of the day was going over the River Ouse via a high aqueduct. Everything seems ‘normal’.
Just before the aqueduct the canal runs on a high embankment………then suddenly you are sort of mid-air and the Ouse is flowing some 35 feet below (see picture below).
The tough of the aqueduct has a very narrow lip on one side. It is very scary place to be chugging! However, it is all over in a flash.
Today’s journey skirts around Milton Keynes for many, many miles and certainly most of the time shows the ‘attractive face’ of the city.
At first it runs through attractive wooded scenery but these gradually give way to hills and open fields. Then you see more and more of the ‘new’ housing. The great thing about Milton Keynes is the vast range of new and good quality housing there is on show from the canal viewpoint.
At New Bradford, Hallmark chugged across its second aqueduct of the day. The canal is high above a dual carriageway road. This was built in 1991. Spectacular but not scary!
At Bridge 82 there is a small notice announcing that soon after the bridge is the proposed junction of the planned Bedford and Milton Keynes Waterway which will provided a much needed broad beam link to The Fens. This will cost between £80 and £150 million and so sadly is not imminent.
After Milton Keynes, especially Bletchley, the canal runs through open country again and meanders through villages but these are mostly well back from the canal bank. At this point the canal is following the course of the River Ouzel.
The day finished with four locks. First lock number 23 called Stoke Hammond and then the short flight of three Soulbury Locks, which were known to boatmen as The Stoke Hammond Three (which sounds like a jazz group!).
These final couple of miles make a great canalscape as the Grand Union skirts round Stoke Hammond. But the end of the day is dominated by the attractive inn named Grand Union at Three Locks.
Before I set off to the pub for a well earned supper I decided to check the stern gland. It was still leaking and quite a lot water had got into the bottom of the boat. But that would be expected with such a long day. Then I noticed a bigger more serious leak. The pipe carrying the cooling water from the canal into the engine water coolers was leaking. It looked serious so I called River and Canal Rescue at 17.45, which is a bit late on a Sunday to expect any service. They answered on their emergency number and said an engineer would call in 30 minutes. They did and would be at the boat in about an hour. A guy called Ralph came and found the problem. It wasn’t the pipe but one of the Bowman rubber cups had split. He did not have a spare but had a good go at a temporary repairSo we have a temporary fix!
So the end of a long day and eventful day…………..but Hallmark is well placed for day 16 as the boat is start of a three mile pound for tommorrow’s start. Lets hope the fix holds good!
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