Still on the catch up!

We left the mooring below Grove Lock in the morning, but not too early, and it wasn't raining at that point. We all headed for Leighton Buzzard for a brief stop - shopping for Barry and Liz, and finding a haircut (me). And then it was onwards, onwards and onwards!
Our next mooring was at Campbell Park. We got on the visitor moorings this time, which were empty, and just as we moored up, the rain came hurtling down again.

We had steamed through Linslade, Slapton and Soulbury (long water stop) as well as Stoke Hammond and Fenny Stratford - it was a fair distance for the day.

The next day we all set off together, but David and I stopped at Wolverton to go to the large Tescos there - I had decided no to Tescos in LB because of my focus on a haircut, and David took on the task of removing the diesel cap which had become stuck, stuck, stuck in place (we'd been using the secret inlet down on the tank since discovering at North Kilworth that we could not open the cap in spite of brute strength turning and yanking by their engineer. However Barry had suggested putting some oil down the keyhole to see if that helped. I am not sure if David did exactly that, but whatever he did, it worked).

It is much further from Campbell Park to Wolverton than I remembered! Milton Keynes covers a very large area and its canal is bounded on one side for much of its length by public parklands.

Note to self: next time we decide to stop at Wolverton, moor up before the pedestrian bridge - NOT after! The wind whistles along that straight and pushes the boat away from the towpath, so it is very hard to pull in tidily and in a timely way. This time it was NOT helped by a family of swans who decided that we may have food for them if they got between the boat and the path ... The mother got out of the way with two or three of the cygnets, but three others decided to try their luck by staying put. A close run thing - I have never cooked swan, but there were very nearly three corpses - may have been escalopes of swan, given how close they came to being squashed ...

I trundled off on my own to the supermarket complete with granny trolley and long list. The first item in the trolley was a new can opener. David and I could NOT work the one that Olek and I bought at the same store a few weeks beforehand. David had asked Barry and Liz, and Barry had shown us how the handle split (doh!), but we were no forrader in getting it to click on to the lid of the can... So I selected a simple, foolproof one, i.e. one similar to every other can opener we have had in our combined 138 years - no changes for us...

David had texted Olek asking him to find a suitable youtube video for the instruction of technically challenged grandparents - he obliged and David phoned me as I was decanting all of the stuff I'd paid for into the granny trolley. David requested I not purchase the simple one. Too late! So now we have two. The tricky one takes off the whole top of the can below the lid's lip. Who knew? Well, I had thought that is what it ought to do, but could not sort out how to attach it to said can top. I did see the offending can opener when I was in Tescos and photographed the instructions - but still I went ahead with the simple one's purchase - I did not trust our ability to interpret and action the instructions. Oh me of little faith! When I got back David had opened a couple of cans - just in a boffining sort of way, you understand! It's a good thing that Kai has two cans of food a day, innit then?

Liz and Barry had cruised past us while I was shopping, so they waited for us at Cosgrove, having been through the lock and then moored up. However once that was done, Lizzie ran back to their boat and set off in front of us - the cheek! She knows we are faster ... But bless her, she had Barry pull over to let us pass. And on we went at the speed of extremely slow light - snail's light I think it may be.

That was Friday, and we had all agreed to get to the bottom of the Stoke Bruerne locks as we had Colleen*** and Mark coming to stay overnight - the dastardly plan was to make them work us all up the locks in the morning.

(*** If you are a regular reader you may remember that we met Colleen and Mark at the top of the Foxton Flight way back when we first started out this year - on our first day, in fact. Colleen and David both used to work at Learning Media - a fact they discovered in conversation that day. We had invited them to come and stay on the boat, and what with the dramas of David's eye and their social engagements, this weekend was the first opportunity. We also invited their daughters but they had sleepovers with friends instead. Probably a good thing, as where would Kai have slept if one of the girls was on the saloon floor?)

Rain, rain, rain intermittently through that boating day; and by the time Colleen and Mark arrived with us, it was hosing down hard.

Fortunately Saturday was clear and sunny, so we could set them to work without feeling too mean - it wouldn't have stopped us working them hard, but there was less moaning than there may have been.

Mark was very lucky to be able to stay on board - he was nearly sent home on Friday night when he dissed Jacinda... 

With Liz and I breasted up with 3 ropes securing our boats together, we were super efficient, especially as, once Mark and Colleen got the hang of it all, David could go ahead and set the locks or assist the people coming down towards us. There were a couple of scary moments though - in particular was the event with two hire boats travelling together with nary a notion at all how to do locks, or how to keep their kids safe around locks and pounds. Aaarrrggghhh! I am afraid that my school teacher voice and pointy finger came out as I demanded that they stop jumping into and off the boat as it was moving towards the lock ... Just imagine how pissed off we would have been if we'd had to stop and scrape munched up children off the locksides or the prop 😓😡😑

Barry leaves Colleen and Mark to do the hard work while he looks after Kai - David was ahead getting the next lock sorted and its inhabitants briefed about veering to one side or the other as Lizzie and I were umbillically** joined, so to speak.

** I did try various spelling of this word, but all of them got the dotted red line, so I went with this one which was my first go, and that looked right in my mind ...

I think it would be safe to say that Colleen was very happy to be onboard.

At the top - an efficient ascent, as always with Lizzie and Barry

After lunch at the top. Kathryn is a gem. I am trying to persuade her to move back to NZ - I think she and Sarah would get on well at Olive Tree Estate, and she'd give Jack a run for his money ...

We were expecting a crew change-over at the top of the locks with 9 of us for lunch - mostly leftovers and salads and fresh bread. The diners were the four on our boat, Lizzie and Barry, Kathryn Dodington from Stoke Bruerne, and Neil and Neill - the latter two being our crew change. However, in spite of saying they would leave Bude at 7 or 7.30am, they actually left at 8.50am. Strangely I was not surprised ...

So after deciding that we would not wait for them for lunch, we also decided that we would head through the tunnel and meet them at Blisworth. Kathryn's advice was that parking their car would be a cinch in Blisworth and free, whereas in SB it would cost and parking was limited.

So it was goodbye to Colleen and Mark and off we went. The timing for meeting N&N was impeccable - as we were mooring up in Blisworth, they appeared on the towpath. Well done, all of us, I say!

N&N belatedly had lunch - left over leftovers, and later we had something for dinner, but I cannot remember what! I do remember that gu puddings featured though. Dessert is so important, I believe.

Aha! Just remembered what we had for dinner after looking at the photos below - I made nasi goreng and coleslaw - as we have no sambal olek or kecap manis or shrimp paste on board I do have to improvise by making a mix of the sambal olek ingredients (isn't google wonderfully helpful?) and adding brown sugar to some soy sauce for the kecap manis and substituting fish sauce for the shrimp paste. Still, with all the adjustments, it tastes fine.

Little Neill and me - he isn't little really, not compared to my height.

David and Big Neil - somehow it was always those two at the table and Little Neill and I in the kitchen. To be fair though, Little Neill did do a significant amount of the cooking over the three days. David did try being toast monitor and kettle monitor at brekkie but I find it too stressful smelling toast on the verge of burning and hearing the kettle whistle unattended - easier at such times to be the one jumping up and down. My bad...

And Enzo, N&N's dog, was perfectly content on meeting Kai - she of course was so chilled that he would have been nuts to upset her. Enzo tried out her bed, drank her water, shared her treats. So no worries there.

Sharing Kai's couch but still tentative

OK, he can stay

You can have my bed and I'll have Marilyn and David's pillows.

As Big Neil is so tall (6'4") he cannot stand straight in the boat (apart from at the open duck hatch) and would definitely not fit in the dinette double, so we give the two of them our bed. Obviously Enzo mimics the behaviour they model - see above photo 😆😙

That meant they had to be banished from the dining table long before they would usually go to bed - about 4 hours earlier for Little Neill - he is notorious for staying up pretty much until others are getting out of bed! I was asleep within minutes I think and I hope I didn't snore too much ...