We lose George and our way at St Neots

Today St Neots to Great Paxton, 3 miles 1 lock
Mon 25th – Great Barford Old Lock to St Neots, 9 miles 3 locks
Sat 23rd and Sun 24th – Moored Great Barford Old Lock

We finished the roof on Saturday – hooray!   Here Vic is putting the final coat on.. It looks much better now..

Next project is to touch up all the paint work when we can find somewhere to get another can of paint, having almost run out now.  Then there is the water tank to empty, clean and repaint.  We should have done it last year and never got round to it.  The water has been fine though and still is, but we must do it before the winter.  It needs time to totally dry out you see after putting on the special water tank paint.  I have spied a place where we can stop and do that on some EA moorings that have a water tap.

I love this mooring by the old lock at Gt Barford.  It is on an island, and to get to it you have to go down a bywater.  Saturday I spent out walking with the dogs, and Sunday spent most of the time indoors because of the rain.  I thought it was never going to stop.. it did though, and gave me time to walk them for an hour or so on Sunday evening.

Monday saw us pulling the pins from this lovely place to head downstream to St Neots to pick up some bread, milk, and to collect and send post.  We were pinging along down the river on Monday, there was a bit of a flow – after all the rain I think.  Mind you this river hardly has any flow on it at all at this time of the year.

It was Monday night that George went walkabouts in St Neots.  I had no idea he had gone.. I had wanted to leave the back door open during the evening and barricaded the exit up so the dogs couldn’t get out, or so I believed.  A phone call.. “Do you have a black lab?” “No I have a choc one though!”… I wondered who on earth it was on the phone.. “Only this black lab has a red collar and your phone number on the tag.. what is your dog’s name?”.. “Err hang on a minute”… I looked for the dogs.. yep George was missing!  “George is missing”  “That’s the one, I have him here”..  It was very late in the evening, I had no idea about roads in St Neots, and this kind lady sent her son out in the car to deliver him back to me at a place I knew.. half a mile from the boat! 

I am dog sitting George and his housemate, the lovely choc lab pup, Tilly.  George is getting on a bit now and has always been a bit of a wanderer.. he gets panic attacks being on the boat in the locks.  It’s normally OK when we are on the canals, he is on the towpath, but on the rivers the locks are too deep for him to be able to get on and off even when going upstream.  I guess that’s why he wandered off.. he did get a bit anxious on Monday.

So before leaving St Neots today, I popped back into the town to get a length of chain.  I can’t keep him cooped up on NP all day and night, he has to have some freedom, but not THAT much.. A tenners worth of decent chain, not too heavy but non chewable will give him 8 metres of freedom.

Vic is looking for a lock!!  “There is no lock here just sluices and a weir”  says Vic … we had taken the wrong route to St Neots lock much to Vic’s amusement!

The turn off signs for the lock have been almost covered by overgrown vegetation.. well that’s my excuse for missing the turn!   St Neots lock is the new one that they built throughout last winter.. Wooden back gates would you believe, but oh boy it is so desperately slow to pass through this one.  Against us it was, and it took around 50 minutes from time of arrival to exiting.

I now they lengthened this one, but one thing that I did notice was that the lock is wider than the exit under the guillotine gate!  Here, this is what I mean..

I suppose they hope in the future to widen the road bridge and put in a new guillotine gate.. this must be the only reason surely that the lock is wider than the exit!

Tonight we are at Great Paxton, or Little Paxton depending on which side of the river you are on.  Here the mooring is in the Paxton Pits Nature Reserve.  I really hoped this mooring would be empty, there is only enough room for one boat here.. We had to hurry away two weeks ago to rush Lucy to the Vet in St Neots because she had a grass seed travel up her leg.. Now we can stay for a couple of days and go and explore.. that is as long as the weather forecast is wrong for tomorrow… rain again they say.