Making a mistake at our first Nene lock

Well, this is it. After years of being mollycoddled on the canals (with some adventurous forays onto the rivers Thames, Trent, Severn and Avon, not to mention the Aire, Calder and Weaver)* we have said goodbye to our last narrow locks for some time and ventured onto the River Nene at Northampton.

Before I talk about that, though, here's a sunset photo I took from the boat at Grafton Regis last week.

We turned onto the Northampton Arm at Gayton Junction yesterday (was it really yesterday? It feels much longer ago. That's boating time travel for you) and enjoyed our descent through lovely Northamptonshire countryside.

We tied up just past the A508 bridge on the Nene by Northampton town centre on a fine wide stretch of placid river. A short trip to the nearby Morrisons ended up with us eating a decent meal in their café: we both had the lamb shank. I cycled back along the towpath to Grafton Regis to get the car, which I parked in a street in Northampton. We shall probably leave it there for quite a while.

For a town centre mooring it was very peaceful. Today we patronised both Aldi and Lidl, as well as returning to Morrisons. We also talked to Brian and Rosie of Nancy Anne. Brian says he reads this blog - sorry it's been so sparse recently, Brian! It was good to meet you. BCF friends Tony and Pat on Paws 4 Thought came alongside for a chat on their way to Northampton Marina. Like us, they are going to St. Neots, so I expect we'll bump into them again on the way.

This afternoon we thought we'd better make a start on our journey, so we untied and quickly found ourselves at Northampton Lock. Here I made two errors. Unlike on most canal lock gates, the telltale for indicating whether the paddle is up or down does not protrude from the top of the mechanism. It's cunningly hidden amongst the metalwork of the gate, so it's not instantly obvious if a paddle is open. After closing the bottom gate and filling the lock (all the locks seem to be left empty with a gate open), I opened a top gate and Jan steered Jubilee in. To start the lock emptying I opened a paddle. Jan seemed to be struggling to keep the boat steady ... which is when I realised that I had omitted to close the paddle in one of the top gates. Oops. With that rectified things became a lot calmer.

The other error? On opening the gate to access the lock landing below the lock the catch bit my finger. Ouch!

Approaching Northampton Lock

We should have stopped at the Northampton Washlands visitor mooring. It was getting near teatime and the mooring was free, but I thought we could get to another visitor mooring - marked as such in the £3 Nene guide - but they didn't seem to exist in real life. We finished up on a "wild" mooring just above Billing Lock opposite the huge Billing Aquadrome campsite.

On the way we spotted a group of children considering jumping from a water control structure.

Yes, they are the wrong side of the railings.

Oh yes, most of the locks we have encountered so far have an electrically-operated guillotine bottom gate.

That's all for now - and I still haven't told you about something REALLY exciting I did recently! But it's time for bed. It can wait.

*actually there are rather a lot of river bits we have done, but mostly with canal sections not too far away. The Churnet and Cherwell come to mind.