Priors Hardwick Bridge 123 to Bridge 100 gap in the hedge

A zoom to try to sort out the budget for panto was on the schedule this morning along with a phone appointment for Mick with his doctor back in Scarborough. Some aspects of doctors appointments work better for boaters than they used to, the only thing is the first Mick heard of his face to face appointment was a reminder text yesterday, thankfully it was easy enough to change it to a phone call.

Only one thing for it with the panto set, the pruning shears had to come out. I’d made a list yesterday of items that could be pruned that wouldn’t affect things horribly, 3 sections of rostra instead of 5, 1 facia instead of 2, fabric instead of twinwall. John had also had chance to think about things and added to the list. Not sure if we’ve lost enough. I’ve some more work to do now, but that would have to wait until later.

Time to see if the new Nebolink would start as we moved off. Mick has done some more research into them. They are made up from tracking devices designed for cars, so we weren’t sure if our slow pace as we moved off from our mooring would automatically kick the Nebolink into action. For the last few months we’ve had two accounts tracking Oleanna, one of those accounts is now linked to the Nebolink, the other dormant, Mick has set up another account on the free starter service so that we can track our journeys whilst we iron out any problems we may have with the nebolink.

As we were about to untie a boat came past, at the bridge in front of us another boat. Some do-si-doing was required before the two boats sorted themselves out, only to find there was another boat following. In the end things sorted themselves out and we managed to find a gap in traffic to pull out.

There was the expected queue at the top of Marston Doles, not as long as it could have been, there was still enough room for us to pull in. One hire boat waiting to go down, another on the water point. Another boat waited to come up. The crews chatted away, the next uphill boat originated from north of York. Mick had managed to leap frog the boat at the water point so it was soon our turn.

The first few locks we met boats coming towards us, but when we reached the main Napton flight there were few uphill boats meaning more walking round locks to open and shut gates, everyone else apart from us and a boat behind must have stopped for lunch.

From a few locks from the bottom I could see that there were volunteers on duty at the bottom. Why do the volunteers here never venture past the bottom lock? Why were there three of them? We chatted as Oleanna came into the lock and then the paddles were lifted and we were on our way again.

The water point was busy, so were the moorings, we’d have lunch on the go and head for a mooring by Bridge 100 where we’ve had a Christmas or two.

How many boats coming towards us!?! Hopefully they’d not all be wanting to moor below the flight. A boat came out from the GU at Napton Junction, then more and more boats came towards us.

We were gradually catching up a little tug. They pulled over to the towpath and waved us past. Naturally we thought they had found a straight for us to overtake at, so we didn’t check our maps, we couldn’t see round a tree and bend. Oleanna sped up to pass as quickly as possible. As we rounded the bend past the tug we quickly realised we were now facing another bend and just as that dawned a boat came round it. More umph needed to avoid collision, thankfully the lady at the helm of the Kate Hire boat kept her cool and both boats passed without touching, the little tug clinging onto the bank for dear life. Hopefully next time they wave a boat past they will wait for a straight length of canal.

Considering the canal was so busy it was surprising that there were so many moorings available. When we reached Bridge 100 we headed for the gap in the hedge, a golden field stretched off across the shallow valley, this would do us for the night.

So how had our new Nebolink done today? Well Oleanna’s location had stayed static for quite some time, then she was shown to be moored in a lock. Then just shortly before we moored up I received an email from Nebo ‘Nebo has detected that Oleanna is moving. Thanks!’ After stopping an email report came through, our journey today had been 0.3 miles! Well we’d actually done 9.3.

In the nebolink there is a white wire which can be attached to a cable that only has power when the engine starts, this will kick start the box into recording a journey. The box being at the bow, this will be hard to achieve, so Mick’s intention is to fit a small switch to the white wire, this will then be turned on when we set off and turned off when we stop for the day. We’ll see if this works.

Dressing tables, bananas were looked at for panto. A new version of the script needed to be read too before I can make any more decisions. A paper copy is far easier to make notes in so I started to print it out. For some reason printing on both sides of the paper set the fear of whatever into Tilly. There’s a monster in the bedroom! She cowered in a corner. Oh blimey! She didn’t even sit on my lap this evening, I think my toes will be cold overnight too, I’d best knit quicker!

9 locks, 9.3 mile, 0.3 on nebo, 2 route plans not uploading, -£3500? 1 quote on the way, 2 busy, 2 many boats, 4.1, 2 sided printing, 1 scaredy cat, 1 disheartened designer, 1 sock progressing, 3 near misses, 1 Christmas mooring, 1 sunset.

https://goo.gl/maps/dSgEr5AUaZU56kVJ6