The Great Bank Holiday escape from St Neots..

St Neots to Gt Paxton (ish), River Gt Ouse, 3 miles 1 lock

Over to the Post Office this morning and some last minute bits and bobs in St Neots before pulling the pins and moving over to the Priory Centre pontoon moorings for a fill of water.  Waved bye to Mavis and John on NB Maybe and made our way to St Neots Lock.  I guess one of the slowest filling locks in the entire country this one.  It is massive, and can take an awful lot of boats.  I think two narrowboats would be OK side by side in it… but I am always wary of the chains on the sides of these locks and getting caught up on them as happened to us last year at Yarwell on the River Nene.

Today we arrived at the lock just as it was ready to enter, and there were two plastic boats on the lock moorings ready to go in, but at the sight of ‘the torpedo’ (AKA No Problem) approaching they waved us through, and I gladly took the offer and pushed the throttle forward.  I would much rather go into an lock empty of boats than one full of the plastic variety! .

Chas and Ann on NB Moore2Life arrived shortly afterwards, but there was no room for them as well.. hummmm maybe they could have got upsides me.. dunno, I must find out the official width of that lock.  It has been rebuilt, you see, last year and the official guide book from Imray has the old measurements… I will find out for errrrrrrrrrr next year? Teehee… maybe,  maybe we will come again…

We decided to leave St Neots for a while, although we do need to go back for our border collie Lucy to visit the vet there on the last day of this month for an operation to repair a hip injury sustained earlier in the year, but on Bank Holiday it looks like St Neots is gonna be a wild place to be….

This was taken this afternoon, and you can see, behind Moore2Life, the fair had moved on to the parkland at St Neots…

Three times we had passed the GOBA moorings at Paxton during the last couple of weeks, and three times it was empty, but we did not stop because we had to be elsewhere… this time we wanted to stop…. typical isn’t it, bloomin typical… no space!!

There is only enough space for one narrowboat.. never mind, I had plan B.. as one does!

I had spied a lovely little mooring just downstream from the Paxton one on the trip from Godmanchester to St Neots last week.. and sure enough that one was free… lubbly dubbly! Actually I like it here even better than the GOBA moorings!

We are looking forward to seeing Mo and Vanessa on NB Balmara tomorrow.  If the rain stops in the morning they are sure to come upstream towards us, and we will be moored here for a day or so.  We are only about half a mile upstream from their mooring this evening.. Blimey it did rain this evening too!