June 2007
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| A picture postcard scene: midsummer in Stoke Bruerne, Northamptonshire. With a pair of old boats pretending they have coal to carry, not tourists. We saw several of these, original down to period costumes, and then a leaflet advertising "heavy horses and live steam" at some nearby festival, and thought ahh. |
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But for the most part it's just you and rural England, tiny fields with hedges, and rabbits. Willows and lots of ducks. The engineering to hold all those tons of water in place is nicely overgrown, almost like a river. Except for when it crosses a river, or these days, a road. It is very strange to see cars driving under your boat! |
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| Going up and down locks. Everything is small enough to work by hand (and back). In fact this is an unusually wide canal, built for 14' wide boats rather than the standard 7', in the hope of establishing a new standard for the new century, the 19th. Instead they got railways. |
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| We turned around just after the Blisworth tunnel, which was 3km long, very dark, wet, and about 6 inches wider than two boats. (Both this and the Cosgrove aqueduct above were serious engineering works of their time, and only succeeded on the second attempt.) Then back down the same locks we'd just come up. |
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| Everyone's favourite no-longer-bouncy bridge. |
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I took the train out to the docklands one afternoon, to see what they've built. More glass offices is the answer, which could be anywhere. (The water was there long before.) I'm not sure what The Globe has to do with Canary Wharf station, other than both being sort-of-round picutres. But we went there too! And were glad not to getting rained on with the peasants in the pit. |
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| Wimbeldon. |
After this we went to Paris. |
