High House Wharf, Nether Heyford

On Tuesday October 14th we made the last part of journey moving Albert to High House Wharf where she will be staying while Colin & Kevin from Spideworx carry out some painting work on the bow flairs and cratch. The weather was fine and breezy.

We arrived at Braunston Bottom Lock to find that a boat had only just gone up ahead of us and was waiting for a boat to come down the locks. The descending boat was Jubilee with Mike Partridge who works the trip boat at Stoke Bruerne. Mike was taking Jubilee into a dock to carry out the usual routine maintenance.

When we got up to the second lock we found that the boat going up had waited for us and was somewhat familiar to us - Jarrah from Aylesbury. We had seen it several times in the basin at the terminus of the Aylesbury arm and it has appeared in some of my photographs. We worked the rest of the Braunston and Buckby flights with Nigel and Rosemary from Jarrah which turned out to be powered by a Kelvin and had a good turn of speed in the tunnel.

We moored up for lunch at Whilton and then made our way to High House in the late afternoon. Nearly "home" for Albert but not quite. We will move Albert back to Kingfisher Marina sometime in the next few weeks when the painting job is finished.