What's the loudest thing in a tunnel?

The first job this morning was to visit the shop and get milk for breakfast and some Savlon for my cracked fingers. While there I crossed the road to the butcher's for a few sausages. Back at the boat I moved us over to the water point to fill up while we had our porridge. At Braunston Bottom Lock a team of CRT greasers was at work scraping off the old, hardened grease from the paddle gear and slapping on some fresh stuff.

At the top lock a team of volunteers was busy preparing the wood- and ironwork for painting.

It's a pity their banner puts canals and rivers in the plural. There's no excuse, really, as the CRT logo, with "Canal and River Trust" written out in full, is on the same banner. (Andrew Bomford's report on Radio 4 a couple of weeks ago made the same mistake.)

Braunston Tunnel was busy. I haven't passed so many boats in one tunnel for a long time - I think there were five. Two of them were Dane towing Clara. Bolinders in a tunnel are so LOUD! It was fine passing them; the trickier ones were the two who came to almost a complete halt.

Turning left onto the Leicester Line we encountered Thomas coming out and wanting to turn right. The man on the tug deck was giving orders to the woman steering; neither really acknowledged us. Perhaps they thought we just shouldn't have been there, getting in their way!

Recent posts have mentioned bloggers' boats; here's one which, these days, is a bit of a blast from the past.

I expect Andrew Denny will be at Crick with his Waterways World hat on (does he wear any other?).

Passage up the Watford Locks was reasonably swift, we were third in a queue at the bottom, but we didn't have to wait for anyone coming down. It was good to meet Graham on Alnwick.

And so we arrived at Crick at about 1500. We tried to get in to the side just beyond Bridge 14, in front of Derwent6, but it was too shallow even for us. Just the other side of the winding hole was where we ended up, with the back end on the last of the piling and the front in reeds. Oh, and the boat immediately behind us? Happy Daze. Nice to see Linsey and Paul again. And Del and Al on Derwent6, of course. And Derek and Judy on Firoza. And Stephen and Gwyneth of Chyandour.

As we came past all the moorings I saw the tiniest moor chick ever. It must have only just hatched - a fuzzy ball of black fluff being encouraged to swim by mummy moorhen. Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of that, but I was more successful with a line of two families of geese.

This evening we treated ourselves to a meal at the Wheatsheaf, the first time we've been there. My slow roast crispy belly of pork was good, as was Jan's chicken forestiere.