Offord Lock's dreadful Landing Stage

Today – Great Paxton to somewhere below Offord Lock, River Great Ouse, 3 miles 1 lock
Yesterday – Moored Great Paxton

Walking was on the agenda yesterday.. and I was amazed to get a good feed of blackberries on the way.. hey it is only July!

Also  yesterday, Vic managed to find the slight leak letting a small amount of water down the inside of the chimney and on to the stove making it a tad rusty looking.  That found and fixed,  he cleaned it all up and sprayed it with a special black stove paint.  When I came back I thought he been out and bought a new one!!  It does look rather smart now!

Today we had to leave our mooring.. well there is only room for one boat there and it is a 48hr mooring.. as always I am sorry to leave spots I like..

See what I mean, not much room for a boat, but there is a gap to get either back or front onto the bank clearing..

Just the one lock to do today, Offord Lock, which we shared with a plastic boat.  You can’t get two narrowboats side by side in these locks they are not wide enough, but the plastic boat fitted in OK behind us.  The landing stages for these locks leave a lot to be desired, and I have to be so careful when trying to moor to them, on this occasion not allowing NP to touch it at all but still letting Vic off the front.  Look at how awful this one is.. If NP had been blown on to it or I had got it wrong, there is nothing underneath the walkway which, as you can see, is window height! Imagine the paintwork if you ran along the edge of it!

There would be a few complaints if this was on BW waterways!

Our friends in the lock were telling me that they need to be back at Hilgay on the River Wissey on Sunday as they are back at work first thing Monday morning… I looked that up later because I thought it was quite a long way.. I was right.. by Sunday they have to do 50.6 miles and 7 or so locks.  It must have been one o’clock today, Friday when we bid them farewell.. They are fair going to have to shift!

We stopped at Buckden Marina for water, it’s free here..

The diesel was costly though at 49p a litre, glad we didn’t need any.  We were going to moor on the GOBA moorings just downstream of Offord Lock, but we didn’t like them, and instead moored at their moorings a little further downstream.. it is so quiet here and very remote indeed, this will do me for the weekend!