Day 010 - Foxton and Deneb.

Set off this morning for Foxton. The sun was trying to shine between rainy showers and heavy gusts of wind caused interest at times. Pleasant cruising, (weather excepting,) through some lovely rural countryside meant that the time travelling to Foxton passed quickly. We arrived at the locks behind one Canaltime boat but as we "knew what we were doing" in the words of the lock keeper, we jumped ahead and made a speedy and uneventful passage up, only stopping at the top to buy hot chocolate and bacon rolls.

We continued on and the wind got steadily harder and harder with Husbands Bosworth tunnel providing light relief from it. Finally mooring after a total of 17 miles and 10 locks in 6.5 hours cruising by which time the rain had joined the wind and the combination made extremely unpleasant cruising.

Not more than 30 minutes passed since mooring up when the horn was heard of an approaching boat. I looked up to see a 70 foot boat pulling in just in front which I soon recognised to be Deneb. Deneb is a brand new and stunning boat with a beautiful fit out partly by the owners and partly by craftsmen from Ashby Boat Builders based on a Colecraft hull. Chris and Yvonne used to own Cygnus and were moored with me in Trinity and so I have known them for some 4 years now. Cygnus was sold and the dream of Deneb, (a binary star in the Cygnus constellation,) was realised. It was good to finally see the inside of this stunning boat and to catch up with Chris and Yvonne.

Tomorrow, the Watford staircase locks and possibly the turn at the junction for the last couple of days towards home. Hopefully the wind will ease and we may even see that yellow glow from the sky that my fore-fathers told me was called 'sun'! Right now, hills block the satellite and so I am attempting to catch up on the boat race through a very snowy picture whilst uploading this blog through 3 bars of GPRS!