We left at 7:30, aiming for opening time at Watford Locks. The Crick Tunnel is a bit of a wet one, I discovered without my hat! We were first at the locks and imediately set off down with one to come up arriving below minutes after ourselves. They had been requested to ascend the first two locks, then wait for us to emerge from the staircase. It was quite windy and instead of waiting for us in the shelter of the lock, they emerged into the pound and made for our exit gates before we had descended the last chamber. The wind then took them and in the end the lock keeper had to go down and take a rope to get them under control. Always best to stay in the lock and wait there! Arriving at Buckby top lock Pat learned that a woman had fallen in the (full) lock that morning. We were following a pair going down, so we found out after the third lock having caught them up, but then had to wait for opposite direction traffic. At the bottom, Pat wanted to visit the Whilton Chandlery for a paper and milk which gave me the option of stopping for diesel. Not at 99p per litre base price! We also stopped after that at Weedon to go down the stairs to the small supermarket. I hadn't realised that the moorings there on the offside are 14 day visitor moorings, not much use though as the boats moored were spread out and the best gap was 59ft 9 inches having tried valiantly to squeeze in. So we moved on into the bushes. Finally, Rugby Boats at Stowe Hill had diesel at 86p. No contest. Preliminary tests showed that we would have no TV reception, so after supper we moved on using the GPS to point to the Sandy Hill transmitter until we had a good view down the cut. Perfect digital TV. So actually, we ended up at Nether Heyford.
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