Showers and sunshine on the way to Sutton Cheney

Thursday 5^th June; bridge 19 to Sutton Cheney

The forecast said rain, and the forecast was right.  We woke during the night to rain, and apart from a brief interlude when I took Jess out first thing, it carried on for most of the morning.  The noise from the engineering works had continued more or less all night but hadn’t been too intrusive and we slept ok.  Dave reports that something got switched off at 5 am.  But we would avoid this spot in future for an overnight mooring.

The mowing contractors had no choice but to carry on working in the rain

Apart from when Dave got the full gear on to take the dog for her walk, we stayed tucked up in the dry until late morning, when we decided to move on as the rain had abated for a while.  If we had wanted to move last night to escape the noise, we would have had over a mile to go before we found somewhere else.  The mowing contractors were still hard at it, having moved along while we sat out the rain.  

He looked pretty fed up when we passed him.  It was raining again, drifting curtains of drizzle.

We stopped for lunch after an hour, having just passed the little marina at Ashby Boat Centre which was our first marina stay after we became the owners of Bonjour.  The sun almost came out and it was dry, so we got going again, though only for another hour.  Far ahead we could see what looked like a loose boat, or was it a work boat? 

A Rothen dredger if I’m not mistaken.  It’s always interesting to see the works of equipment, especially when they are still clean and bright.

We couldn’t see how it was secured.  Maybe one of the stabiliser feet was down.

We took on water at Sutton Cheney.  The boater we met yesterday said he thought the rubbish bins had been removed, which sadly turned out to be true, and there was not even somewhere for glass or plastic bottles by the café.  The toilets are still there, all nice and clean but probably as much for the benefit of the café customers as boaters.  I thought there was once a shower, but there isn’t now.  The bookshelves (donation to the RNLI) are still there, though looking tatty and unloved and there was nothing I fancied.  By now it was lovely and sunny, and we moved along to the pontoon for the night.  

A new little family

Dave went down the engine hole for further investigations into charge not getting through to the bow thruster batteries, and found another fuse tucked in by the split charge relay.  Then he noticed how close the dark clouds had got and got closed up just in time to keep dry.  I had been going to take Jess for a run in the woods … we went later when the rain had stopped.  Several boats went past once we had moored, but no-one joined us on the pontoon, though there was plenty of room.  Jess and I went as far as the Battlefield visitor centre, which of course was closed that time of the evening but you can still visit the sundial, which has a symbolic crown on a lance as the gnomon.

 

Ranged around it are wooden posts with the names of people involved in the battle, one of whom was the luckless Richard III.

The White Boar, Richard III's badge

Poor Richard.  As you can see, the sun was shining at the time, enough to throw shadows of me and the crown on its lance.

 

It rained a bit more later on.  The internet signal here was not strong enough to upload a blog post and there was no signal at all on my mobile, so no chance of getting a better signal by tethering the phone.

4½ miles