It rained quite hard this morning. Chris had a sequence of zoom calls which meant that to get to Leighton Buzzard we needed to move early, and then stop whilst he had his calls. Unfortunately it was really not a good idea to move anywhere at 8.00am. We thought we'd have a go at 9.30am, but that was wet too. And then Chris 11.00am call was cancelled, and so we had from 10.45 am until 12.00 to make some progress, so despite the rain which started again whilst we had been dithering about what to do, we set off. It's really not fun doing locks in the rain. The first two were very close together which helped, and then we had to travel about half a mile to the third. By this time we needed to moor up again so Chris could do his 12.00 noon call! We were moored by this building. I'm not sure what it is, and I didn't go to investigate, but my guess would be a pumping station of some sort!
The countryside had very much opened up after the narrow confines of the Chiltern cutting, and we had big views out across the Chilterns and Ivinghoe Beacon too.
As you can see in the photo below, the wind was picking up and there were real waves on the canal. It's quite a wide stretch of water just here.
Several of the locks were built just before bridges which had dual arches like this one. Chris was unable to resist the 'right hand arch' recommendation. I suspect that the canal might have had parallel locks at one time, but not longer. You can see the choppiness of the water still, and in quite a lot of cases as you went into the lock it was not possible to choose which side of the lock the boat would go - the wind did that for me!
You can see in the photo below how the canal has ruffled water, and here the wind was blowing straight down the canal , but if you don't concentrate, and the boat prow starts to move one side or the other the wind will absolutely reinforce that move, and it's very hard work to get back on the straight again.
For one stretch of maybe half a mile, I was following a kingfisher which darted out from the shrubs on the right and flew really low above the water. They are such a brilliant splash of colour, whether you are seeing the turquoise or the orange plumage. Several times it alighted on bushes quite a bit above the canal. The picture below does include the kingfisher, and you can nearly see it taking off from it's branch. It's about a third in from the right and a quarter of the way down. I would point out that I was trying to drive the boat at the time, so photographic finesse was not possible! It was so lovely to see and to see it for more than the usual single flash.
As we came towards Leighton Buzzard with just two locks to go, I took this picture, realising that the wide stretch of water in front of me was the little Ouzel River, with a lake beyond. It was clearly much wider than normal. Having finished the last lock for the day we set off to motor through Leighton Buzzard and went under a railway bridge which normally had one arch for the canal and another for the river. Today the river was so full that it was flooding the field nearby and running into the canal having flooded the towpath. Together with the wind, it was quite challenging driving.
Whilst at the last lock, I did have time to photograph the sky which had amazing clouds. The one just above the trees looks like a fluffy rabbit to me, with two eyes and appropriately long feet. Chris tells me it's a duck. No accounting for taste is there?
We didn't actually go into the town of Leighton Buzzard, but I thought the canalside looked very attractive in the late afternoon sunlight. Sunlight itself was very welcome after a day of showers.
As we came to the last lock it became clear just how extensive the river Ouzel had now become. It really fills the valley bottom, and looks very attractive, but I bet those faced with restrictions about where they can go were not so impressed.
We moored up the intention of going to the Globe Pub which is by the canal and a few hundred metres from our mooring. As we walked along there we passed fields where the only sign of how the land should be were the hedgerows sticking out of the water, and the exhortation to stay to the path seemed a little unlikely! As we got to the pub we could see that the car park was under 2 feet of water, and so were the picnic tables. There were lights on upstairs but none downstairs. Whether some of the pub buildings were flooded was not clear from our observations. We went back to the boat and put on a frozen cod mornay that we had had in the freezer and very acceptable it was too.
We've got 29 miles and 7 furlongs and 14 locks still to do. Tomorrow looks as though it should be sunny if cold and we have 6 locks to do and a lot of miles of flat water wiggling around Milton Keynes (but no roundabouts!)
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