Wednesday 17th July, posted …….?
Another scorcher. The radio 4 weather said it was going to be 32 today and we reckon it was. We set off for the locks to find that we only had a half-hour wait at the bottom, and a shorter wait half-way up, and we were done by 11 having arrived at the bottom at 9.30. The work was easy as pie – narrow locks as well, yippee!
As it’s mid-week and the schools haven’t broken up yet, there weren’t a huge number of gongoozlers, just a couple of families with little kids who asked some good questions and ‘helped’ open a gate. We took on water before finding an excellent shady spot beyond Gumley Road bridge to moor up. We smartened ourselves up and set off to buy ice-creams at the top lock and do a spot of gongoozling of our own. This sculpture of a horse and child was at the top of the locks;
We walked round the ‘discovery trail’ and didn’t go into the museum, but saw this intriguing sundial outside in the shade;
It only made sense once we went round the corner into the sun and saw this, which was showing the right time of 12 noon;
We looked at the inclined plane of course, though it’s difficult to take pictures that show it all!
It’s absolutely scorching in the sun and we felt sorry for the people waiting at the top of the flight.... poor old Tess would have hated this weather. We strolled back for lunch in the shade, then Dave touched up a few bits of paintwork until the sun came round, when we set off to find a better spot which we did near bridge 51, not very much further on. There were boats moored every hundred yards or so in patches of shade, and we had a lovely spot with a herd of cows in the field opposite to keep us entertained. In spite of the shade, the evening was intensely hot. The cows came down periodically to drink and splash about, which didn’t do much for the fishing!
Just the lovely Foxton flight and a couple of miles today. Too hot for anything else.
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