There's a nip in the air tonight near Cogenhoe

Rushden and Diamonds (Irthlingborough Lock) to Earls Barton (White Mills Lock), River Nene, 9.5 miles 8 locks

We had a great night last night with Chas, Ann, Mo and Vanessa.. three ‘blogging boats’ all together.. No Problem, Moore2Life and Balmaha.  Mo and Vanessa left fairly sharpish this morning heading for Cogenhoe, and after Ann and I had taken the dogs for a walk, we also pulled the pins on the Rushden and Diamonds Football Club moorings. 

It’s quite handy here, the services are contained in one of their buildings, so we have rubbish, water, loo tip-out disposal and a pump-out for boats that have holding tanks for their loos, and even that was working today, and so it should, these facilities were a joint venture between the football club and the Environment Agency and cost a whacking £120,000!!

Locks come thick and fast now as we move upstream towards Northampton, but the river is very attractive as it winds round keeping us on our toes getting No Problem around the tight bends.  We stopped at Wellingborough for water, it was too busy at the Rushden and Diamonds moorings to get water this morning, and while Vic filled our tank, I popped over to the handy Tesco for some fresh vegetables. 

It started to rain when I got back, but we set off with the canopy up, it sure is working well… I have the front screen folded back over the canopy so there is no screen showing at all.. I can’t see a bloomin thing with that down in the rain, I could do with windscreen wipers!!

It wasn’t long till we passed Donnington on the right bank, we stopped here on the way down the Nene.  There is a lovely nature reserve here, Summerhays Nature Reserve, but today we passed under the little footbridge…

… and onward.  Such is the beauty of the Northampton countryside, but horrors upon horrors around one corner we were faced with this monstrosity.. 3 absolutely huge buildings more like distribution centre size… tons bigger than out of town supermarkets I am sure.. and on the side was a big banner saying “ TO LET – Investing in Northamptonshire”..

I really don’t know how they get away with this.. it is not near any main roads or towns, just stuck right in the middle of the countryside.. *sigh*

We stopped this evening just upstream of White Mills Lock, there are some nice grassy moorings here and it is reasonably quiet, but it was just gone 5pm when we arrived and the local quarry was quiet.. see what happens tomorrow, if it is noisy we could always move down to Cogenhoe..

We had some tremendous thunderstorms this evening, and torrential rain.. Vic is keen to move off the Nene now just in case it floods… for sure I see what he means, there was a lot of rain in a very short space of time this evening, it remains to be seen tomorrow if it has affected the river levels further upstream. 

We lit the fire an hour or so ago, it suddenly went quite chilly… still, I like the fire lit, and now it is lovely and cosy here..