No Direction

No Direction is our 70ft Narrowboat which is now home to my wife Jayne and myself, it was launched on 4th February 2008.

We spend the Winters in a Marina and cruise in the warmer weather.

Tuesday 27 July 2010

Surprising Milton Keynes

Monday, 26th July 2010.
Cosgrove to Stoke Hammond.
14 Miles. 2 Locks.

We left our weekend mooring about 9.30 this morning and headed for a Tesco that Jayne had found in the Pearson Canal Guide book that she uses,( I use a Nicholson Guide as I prefer them)  about 300 yards from Bridge 71, we only bought supplies for this week as there is another Tesco store at Leighton Buzzard which we will pass on Thursday and that one has moorings outside so it means less Donkey work for me. ( Of all the Supermarkets, Tesco's is the last one I would choose but these 2 are close to the Canal)
I left Jayne to stow the shopping and got going again, the next 6 or 7 miles through Milton Keynes was a pleasant surprise to us, the canal has been treated very well by the developers and I did not see anywhere which looked overun by housing or industrial estates, I am sure they were there but were well away from the Canal and there were plenty of trees to shield everything.
One thing we were on the look out for was a sighting of our old boat "April Rose", we knew it was in or around Milton Keynes as about 6 months after it was sold on Brokerage by Whilton Marina we had a letter from British Waterways telling us that we owned a boat which was at Milton Keynes without a current Licence, we phoned British Waterways and told them to contact Whilton for the new owners address, 3 months later we had another letter from British Waterways and it said," Your boat is still at Milton Keynes without a Licence", this time Jayne rang and didn't hold back, we never heard anymore about it.


April Rose, our 42ft Colecraft

We went up Fenny Stratford lock, a rise of 13 inches and stopped at the British Waterways facility, there were 2 boats already there,so we just emptied the Cassettes and were off again to Willowbridge Marina to collect the spare parts that had been delivered there and to fill up with Diesel. 
We can recommend Willowbridge as not only were they willing to accept a package and hold onto it for us, the Red Diesel was 72p/Litre (basic price) , there is rubbish disposal and there are recycling bins, I already had it marked in the guide book as "OK" after reading another blog,  Seyella's Journey,  they called in there about 2 years ago and gave a good report.
We then carried on through Stoke Hammond Lock and moored for the night.
We had a bit of drizzle this the morning but apart from that it was a good day all round.

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