Sunday 2 September 2018

Swans living dangerously and a historic fly-past

I'm rather pleased with this shot of Jubilee at the pub mooring at Wadenhoe this morning. We set off at about 0915, just before a group of a dozen swimmers climbed down the bank into the river.

At one of the first locks we came to we found the guillotine gate down and both vee doors open with their sluices up. The rule on the Nene is to leave the lock empty with the guillotine gate (the bottom gate) up. In this instance it didn't matter much as three boats came downstream into the lock as I walked up to set it.  There were another two locks left with the guillotine gate down; I did a lot of wheel turning today.

We were just about to fill another lock when five swans dropped over the top gates vee doors into the chamber. I opened the paddle sluice my side gently ...

... but the crew from the other boat in the lock was less kind to the birds, opening his sluice quickly and causing the swans to swim around furiously in the turbulent water.

I'm pleased to report that all the swans survived and swam out as soon as the vee doors were opened.

We passed an apparently windowless new-looking narrowboat. Are windows cut out later, or is this boat strange?

Before tying up at Irthlingborough we were treated to a fly-past by what looked like WWII aeroplanes.

Does the one on the left have German markings on the wings?

Is this a Hurricane?

And is this a Spitfire?

I cycled into Irthlingborough to see if there was a service at the church at 5 pm as advertised on their website. There wasn't.

It has been a perfect day for boating: wall-to-wall sunshine, warm, little wind. Tomorrow we'll go the short distance to Wellingborough where Ally will meet us to help with a little car shuffling.

2 comments:

Licoricetwist said...

Terry says the top one is a Messerschmitt 109
Middle on is a Hurricane
Bottom one is a Spitfire

Halfie said...

Thanks Terry, good to have my guesses confirmed (plus the identification of the Me 109). I wonder where they were going.