We left for Yardley Gobion for Stoke Bruerne in the afternoon and had a routine trip up the Stoke flight. We managed a dinner at the excellent Spice of Bruerne. Friday saw us going through Blisworth tunnel around 8:30 to get far north as possible.
Entering Blisworth tunnel from the south
Burn-out boat at Weedon - amazing amount of distortion to the cabin steelwork It appears that it happened on April 7th and was a stove accident.
The trip went well and we reached Wilton by lunch. We went up the Buckby flight as a single and moored up at Norton Junction late afternoon.
Attractive marsh marigolds in side-ponds at Long Buckby
In the evening we went to The New Inn and enjoyed their food and ale.
To get through Braunston tunnel without a hitch we again left relatively early and got through the tunnel without meeting a boat coming the other direction. At Braunston Top Lock things took a turn for the worst when, very unexpectedly, Albert's engine stopped on tick-over as we approached to lock moorings. Not a good scenario! We managed to re-start the engine but all the way down the flight the engine ran erratically.
Descending Braunston Flight with cruiser
It was clear there was a problem with one of the injector pumps that was sticking. We stopped in Braunston to sort out the problem and consulted Tony Redshaw but the problem got worse with time. To cut this story somewhat short, we failed to solve the injector problem and so we booked Albert into Tony's workshop for Monday. Albert is now at Braunston but without injectors which were sent by Tony to be refurbished by a specialist company near Leicester. We look forward to having them back and the engine working properly again.
Braunston Marina
Sunset at Braunston Turn
Many thanks to our friends Bob and Lyn Doyle on NB Moriarty who on Sunday helped us out a lot by towing Albert from Braunston Marina to Redshaw's which is close to the turn. It was not without a bit of excitment. There were no boats around when we decided to move Albert using poles, but as soon as we started to move two boats entered the marina, one wanting to moor alongside us. As we got close to the road bridge, under tow, a day boat crew going under the bridge were quite suprised to find the pair of us approaching!
