27th June 2012

As I sit and write this we are moored up in St Neots on a pontoon outside The Priory Centre, but more of this later.

We decided to stay over at our mooring on Tuesday, alongside the Paxton Pits Nature Reserve where I tried a bit more fishing (with no luck), and Sally and I had a good walk around with Sock’s on a walk of discovery. Sock’s is changing so much and becoming a really well behaved dog (and part of the family), he spend nearly all of the time off his lead and never strayed too far away. Examining all the nooks and crannies to see what he could find, at one spot there were rabbits, his source of great enjoyment, although we saw them, he didn’t but kept running around sniffing, disappearing into the bushes on his search. He returned to us when he was called, which to us is a major step forward and as Sally and I split up on separate paths, he had a great time running back and forth to each of us in turn. Back at the boat, with his feet washed he just crashed out on his bed and went to sleep, he must have worn himself out.

We spent the rest of the day reading and rounded it off with an hour of TV before we went to bed.

I woke on Wednesday morning expecting rain, as had been forecast, but hey, no rain and instead we had a mixture of sun and cloud, a nice surprise indeed. Whilst getting ready to set off to St Neots we had a call from Alex, NB Steelaway, and had a bit of a catch up (sorry about the rain at the Isle of Man) we hope it didn’t entirely ruin your trip. Anyway Sat Dish taken down, and our little garden watered we set off for St Neots lock, and as the river had gone down about four inches in the night we were touching the bottom and had to push off to clear the prop.

 Leaving our mooring

Once again the views were beautiful, tree lined banks with lots of bends in the river to keep you guessing just what was around the corner. We also cruised passed a small windmill, just like the ones in America on the cowboy films, pumping water from underground to keep a small reservoir filled up for the farmer. Sally and I had a good laugh as she set up to photograph it, there was only one small tree along the bank here and she clicked just as it blocked off the windmill, but she got it on the next click.

Yeee harrr

Here as before, where the river narrowed we had to increase the revs to keep the boat going forward and nearing the lock there were private moorings, set up with little cabins, right little home from homes.

The only cormarant for a while

At the lock the river opened up to a large pool, lined with an old mill and several houses or flats with the lock to the right hand side. Mooring on the pontoon there was a short walk up and across the road to the lock itself covered in scaffolding and fenced off to the public. Here EA are installing a new guillotine lock just behind the old one, and I figured that we could go no further, however the old one was still in commission and I opened it ready for Sally to bring the boat in.

 Here we had a good chat to the guys working on the lock and they were telling us of the difficulties they were having in getting it commissioned, trying to get the electricity board and EA to work together (you are having a laugh, working together). The lock and the channel out of it had new houses and apartments built along the length of the island at Little Paxton, passing them we turned back onto the main river. Here the river was wide, and to one side there were flood meadows and on the other some very nice houses with private moorings and gardens which went up to the rather large houses.

We made our way from here slowly, looking for the EA mooring outside of the Priory Centre, first came the Ouse Valley river club, then the rowing club and on to the pontoon just to the west of the town bridge. So we are moored not 100meters from the town centre and about the same to the supermarket, but sad to say not a good place for the ships cat, Gypsy.

 Rather him than me