Foxton Locks

At long last I have the chance to use the computer, while the Skipper is away having a look at the antiquities of Foxton Locks and what is left of the inclined plane and boat lift. It’s a lovely day so he’s shot off while the weather is still half decent.

But since we’ve started travelling he’s always on the computer. As soon as he stops ‘JP2’ at the end of the day, out comes the gadget and he’s either writing HIS news in the blog or getting up to date with HIS emailing.

I don’t get a chance to use it, unless he’s away for a while like this morning.

But it’s so lovely to be on the move again after that long cold winter at Warwick... You don’t know how it gladdens my heart.

Though you humans probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, the water is a lot warmer now that the Sun has been out for a few days and it is sheer pleasure to feel it swishing along my sides again and I never want it to stop.

But the Skipper is different. He still likes to hang about in one place...... He’s such a dawdler! I do wish he was more like me with the urge to keep travelling.

And when he stops to tie up it seems to me he always chooses the shallowest part of the canal so I am left sat sitting in cold sucking mud. And I know canals are dish shaped, with the deepest part down the middle and the shallowest toward the sides but I was born unfortunately with a bigger bottom than most girls, or in more technical terms, I’m deeper drafted so I come in contact with the mud much sooner than anybody else!

This does work in two ways. While I’m moving along through the water I enjoy sooner than most, the sensual feel of the mud’s soft and tender caress as it slides along my bottom... This is wonderful. But when I’m stationary sitting in the mud, the feeling is entirely different. It’s like you girls having to put up with a cold clammy hand clamped onto the most sensitive part of your anatomy for a long period! You’d complain too I’m sure.

So you’d think that the Skipper would appreciate these things and would keep moving all the time for my sake as well as his own. Having been stuck in one place all winter, you’d reckon he would want to keep going too. But being a man, of course he doesn’t understand any of these finer feelings.

To him mud is mud, that’s all there is to it... And I’m just being a silly complaining female!

It’s not right the things we girls have to put up with is it?

So after four months in Warwick we quickly arrived at Yelvertoft to meet his friends. And whereas I thought it would probably be just over night to see them, what does he go and do? He moves into the marina and stays there for a week and I’m stuck with a lot of other non talkative posh boats in a close packed dormitory. What am I supposed to do, while he’s busy doing his socialising? Just sit there and twiddle my rope ends? He did get 240 volts plugged into me which made me feel less depressed but I was so glad when the time came to leave and it was such a beautiful day too.

But then after one day’s passage we arrived at the end of the Welford Arm and though it was a delightful part of the country, it was spoiled by the Skipper deciding to spend the whole weekend there. There was absolutely nothing for me except peace and quiet .... and cold clammy mud of course!

We left yesterday and though it was exciting passing down the Foxton Flight of eight staircase locks; dropping seventy five feet in about two hundred yards, and tying up at the bottom overnight, the Boss has decided to stay an extra night so he can spend today looking at all the old engineering and visiting the museum.

So there we are! I have to say I’m beginning to run out of rope ends!