Oooops, rather slow off the mark this morning. We didn’t awake until 10.30am!! The bedroom cabin can be made very dark indeed which we optimized on. Our plan was to wander down to the canal museum in Stoke Bruerne which we decided was still doable as we only had four hours of cruising to do today.
On our walk down we came across these two lovely horses who are 25 and 27 years of age and still working. They work for the museum pulling the old motorless wooden canal boats on days when they have Canal festivals. They were very docile and certainly didn’t mind a scratch.
So we are going to try and find the oldest lock stone on our journey and now we are down to 1864. This doesn’t mean it will be the oldest lock stone on the whole system as there may be older ones on other canals.
This certainly caught our eye. Can’t say we saw any ducks around but we will be mindful from now on.
Now there are two things wrong with this picture. Firstly the width of the boat. People are now getting into these twelve foot wide beasts which take up way too much room on the canals. We have not seen two of them pass one another yet but reckon they will cause choke points. They are limited as to where they can go as they ain’t going to squeeze into the single locks. The second really bad thing is the guy with no shirt on. Why, oh why does the average English male think it is cool to bare his lilly white, sunken consumptive chest to all and sundry.
We just had to put this in for Frasers mum, Barbara. It isn’t a twelve footer but more a ten footer so we will let this one pass.
Whilst remaining on the boat theme, some of you may remember from our 2016 cruising of the northern canals that we were rather derogatory towards these plastic boats. Our opinion has not changed and they still look like yoghurt pots. They meantime, refer to us as sewer tubes as we carrying our own waste with us. When it comes to a yoghurt pot and a sewer tube mixing it up in a lock, a 20 ton sewer tube will win out every time!!
Magnificent ornate stone bridge as we come into Cosgrove for the evening. The story is that no one knows the history behind why it is so ornate. There aren’t even any rumours that abound.
Definitely not an ornate tunnel. This tunnel goes under the canal and was used to take the horses at the end of the day from pulling the boats, across to the stables for feeding and bedding which were on the other side of the canal. We used it to make our way to the Barley Mow pub for a pint.
We have moored in a small town called Cosgrove which is a quiet village away from any busy roads. Cosgrove use to be an area where a lot of hay and straw was shipped down to London via canal for London cab horses. The history throughout England is pretty mind blowing for those of us that come from countries that are still in their infancy.
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