Napton

This evening I am with the blogger’s modem nightmare. This particular blogger anyway  …… ‘GPRS’.

The speed of this internet connection is so slow as to be almost non-existent. In fact at times I wait for about ten minutes (so patiently!) for something to upload only to get the white screen displayed with the message that the internet site I require is not available.

Text is about all I can manage if anything to upload so I don’t even try to post photos anymore unless I have the glorious ‘3G’ connection, with its sparkling sapphire blue fixed light shining brightly over me from the modem, like a planet in the heavens.

So tonight I have to be brief.

As the title implies, we are moored in my favourite spot about thirty yards above Napton Bottom Lock. We arrived at 2.30 and have enjoyed the sunshine ever since. Earlier I took a short walk down to the Folly Bridge Shop, next door to the ‘Folly’ Pub, to see my old acquaintance, the Winston Churchill lookalike, who runs it and all the while chatters on happily, while I am trying to concentrate on what I have to buy.

Napton always has a special place in my heart. It is so quiet, even though it’s busy with hire boats going in both directions at this holiday time of the year. But the Sun always shines on Napton Hill so that the houses and windmill seem to shimmer so brightly at all times.

Soon I have to make my mind up whether to try for Newark via the Leicester Arm with its water shortage restrictions or to go for the longer route via the North Oxford and Coventry Canals, turning right at Fradley Junction. The former is quicker and enables me to savour on the way, the lovely River Soar but I need to be realistic and above all practical.

I’ll phone British Waterways tomorrow morning before setting off to see what they advise.