The moorings at Fenny Stratford seem nicer than we’d remembered. This morning was sunny and clear, and when I took Macc for his early walk he went berserk, running up and down with a stick. Most of the photos I took were blurred he was going so fast, and one or two missed him altogether! In all of them, he has all his feet off the ground.
The lake looked lovely with the sun rising behind it.
Adrian wanted to get a few things sorted for his brother following the fire, so while he went to Tesco to get a new SIM card, I helped a single hander on Braidbar No 80 through the lock.
It was about 10.15 when we set off, on these very familiar waters. The thing about the canal in Milton Keynes is that it just seems to go on and on. And there are several places where there’s a modern road bridge with an old canal bridge beyond, and you forget which is which. You turn a corner and realise there’s a whole section you’d forgotten about, and you’re further away from your destination than you thought.
We met a few boats going the other way, some of them at awkward bridges. But the number of moored boats seemed to be down; we could do a fair chunk of the day’s distance at a reasonable speed. We got to Campbell Park just before 12, and much to our surprise the 48 hour moorings were empty, so we tied on the rings at the end, exactly where we did on the way down. After lunch I headed into town, taking a parcel for posting to Adrian’s brother, and going to the bank to sort something out for my dad. My route took me up through Campbell Park, and I made a slight detour to see the sun dial.
The first post office place, in a Londis store, couldn’t take the parcel. No explanation, just said the QR code didn’t work. So I then headed to Santander, whose only branch in MK is in their big building up nearly at the railway station which is about as far away from the canal as it’s possible to go. There is just one banking counter in a work cafe, but I waited only a few minutes and the guy was able to do what I needed done. Then I walked back the other side of Centre MK to a different post office counter where everything worked perfectly. I came back down the other side of Campbell Park, first visiting the MK Rose, a series of columns carrying the dates of significant events.
Then I went to the Light Pyramid, and admired the views from up there.
During the day, I had an email from Mick from Oleanna. He said their blog is having a hosting issue at the moment, meaning it’s rather slow to load. I suppose it matches their fantastic repair, which also took longer than expected! But if you’ve were wondering why their blog was slow, that’s the reason — but it’s being dealt with.
4 miles, 0 locks. (155 miles, 115 locks)