… well you get the drift.

Sunday, and again the forecast for the day was a splendid morning followed by rain and thunderstorms later. So SWMBO broke the habit of her retirement and we actually managed to set off by 09:00! Meantime, we’d spotted Crackerjak, another Piper Boat heading downstream.

Van Diemen, who had moored up right behind us, proved to be occupied/crewed by a single-handing chap from Tasmania, who keeps his boat at Ramsay in the Cambridgeshire Fens and comes over to cruise the English canals and rivers for several months every summer. He’d already intimated he was one of the 7o’clock brigade (off at crack of sparrows, moored up by lunchtime) so we were surprised when he came out to say goodbye while we locked through the heavy hand-wheel operated Ashton Lock for the third time. He confessed we’d shamed him yesterday into having a day of housework and cleaning!

Oundle is apparently a delightful town, the “Jewel of the Nene”, but like everywhere else around here it doesn’t encourage river-bourn visitors. With the fishing match over, we could have stuck our nose in the bank near Waitrose and the North Bridge, but the supermarket wouldn’t yet be open, and being Sunday, all the nice individualistic emporiums in the town centre would be closed. So chugging off round the outskirts for the third time, we ruefully decided that we’d have to try harder on the way back. Maybe.

Still it was nice to be cruising in the sunshine.

We came across some young or small heavy horses who were enjoying the sunshine too.