A post script to yesterday…..
It was one of those days when we had nothing planned because we had done our travelling the day before and thus could stay put. It was slightly annoying that we only had an intermittent internet connection, so we walked along the towpath to see if it improved, but no such luck. A faint drizzle accompanied us as we explored the village and local church, ending up by the lock where two boats were going down. We helped with the gates and chatted to the crew. One of the boats moored up alongside us and we helped pull them in, continuing to chat, which resulted in them inviting us for a drink in the early evening. Returning to our boat for lunch, I happened to glance out of the hatch as a boat was passing and realised it belonged to our friends A and S who we originally met at Dunchurch marina, when we first bought Naomhog, on the Grand Union Canal, nearly three years ago. I grabbed hold of the windlass and took off along the towpath to set the lock for them and open the gates. They are a few years senior to us and had already come up the Caen Hill flight and were feeling pretty tired. S told me that he had asked God for a couple of angels to come and help them with the lock and suddenly R and I appeared! We told him he was our angel, because he was able to help R tighten our fan belt – a job that R did not relish doing on his own, as he was unsure how to do it, but he knew S had a lot of experience with engines! We had known A and S were somewhere on the K&A but it would have been so easy to miss them, especially as they are travelling in the opposite direction to us.
One further delight of the day was meeting B and J for supper in the local pub. We first met B and J when our children were at primary school together over thirty years ago, but they moved away and we had not seen them for many years. We knew they lived near Marlborough and it was such fun catching up with them. The years rolled away and it was as if we had seen them yesterday!
And as for today, we started travelling along the Long Pound and it really is as beautiful as we have been led to believe. We even briefly caught sight of a kingfisher and then a duck with its four ducklings. I’m saddened at how few ducks and swans there are on the water. Far less than on the other canals we have been on.
R is reading Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens at the moment (we went to the Dickens Museum in Doughty St, London, and it is well worth at least one visit, if not two). Imagine his surprise as we passed this boat, as the name held no meaning to me, but he had just read it as a quote from Nicholas Nickleby:
NarrowboatTLC 