Well, we unfroze on Monday night in Fenny Compton, but Elizabeth and Pete had to go to Oxford on Tuesday, so we couldn't set out until Wednesday. By then the canal had frozen over again, but just a thin layer. We decided to move in any case and set out late morning. We were certainly breaking ice and were grateful to pass a British Waterways working boat going the opposite direction about an hour after we set out, as all the ice behind it would be broken already! We only passed three other boats on the journey and moored up at the very country Marston Doles just after lunch. No streetlights, no sound of train, no motorway sounds... all idylic except no coverage on Virgin (our personal mobiles) or Vodaphone (our internet) and only a little on Orange, with antenna, our home number. At least we had a little coms! But that's why we haven't blogged until now.
We set out from Marston Doles (in other words, the top of the 9 lock Napton flight) this morning at 8:30 and made a sweet turn into Blue Haven Marina at 3pm this afternoon. We had an interesting time in one lock of the flight. The pound was so low between us and the next lock that we sat in the upper lock for a while with the upper gate sluice open and the lower gate sluice open in order to allow water to flow down from our pound to the pound below, filling it up a little for our journey in it. Elizabeth managed the tiller at this time and found much more energy in the water than anticipated! Finally we filled the lock one more time from the upper pound in order to let that much more water into the lower pound. By the time we pulled out, we had managed to raise the level of the pound by nearly a foot - enough to give us the draught we needed to move to the next one. Apparently the lock gates at the bottom of the lock we were going to leak considerably, hence, emptying the pound between the locks. We expected to do lock management, but never quite so much water management! Luckily, there is a BW office at Napton Bottom Lock, and we were able to tell the story to a grateful maintenance guy at the lock.
