Lost and Found

We had a very tasty evening meal in The Globe Inn last night.  I was rather interested in the history of the pub.  There was a sign on the wall that stated…

The Inn was first licensed in 1830 as a beer shop, serving passing trade on the canal, which is a few feet from the front door.  It was described as a public house in 1838 on the ‘Linslade Tithe Award’ run by Joseph Spires and owned by William Swinstead.  The family ran the pub through the 19th Century.  By 1841 it had got its name The Globe Beer Shop.  The Inn passed to another local family thereafter “The Sayells” ran it until the Second World War.

Cruising commenced at 9am with a short stretch to be covered to reach Leighton Lock. Jan went forward to find a solo boater about to descend.  It started to rain just as she commenced emptying the lock.  By the time we had worked Waiouru up through the lock both of us were feeling decidedly cold.  Jan was lowering the last gate paddle when the safety latch slipped and the paddle dropped.  Her favourite windlass did a wrrrrrrrr and flicked into the air, bounced of the bow and pirouetted into the canal.  Fortunately she wasn’t hurt in the process.   (a loss!)

No point in both of us being cold and wet so I suggested she go below into the warm and change her clothes.  By now the wind had picked up forcing me to ‘crab’ down the canal into Leighton Buzzard where the 2 hour moorings outside Tesco were all vacant.  The pantry needs replenishing and we headed off to the Aldi and Tesco.  Jan found someone had left a one pound coin in the Aldi shopping trolley (a gain!)

The rain had stopped so after a quick bite we headed off south.  The rain might have stopped but the wind had certainly picked up and the mercury had fallen.  No doubt the countryside further north has gone white!  The side on wind made cruising difficult but that was nothing compared to the locks.  The first was Grove Lock where lining Waiouru up on the approach proved problematic.  The lock setting is rather attractive, probably more so on a sunny day in summer.

The next lock, Church Lock,proved to be a real challenge.  The wind was blowing Waiouru against the lower lock landing and I was struggling to get her off.  Jan was out of direct line of sight but I could see she had opened one gate.  I’d need to ‘crab’ into the lock and really needed the second gate open.  Just as I managed to get the bow into the lock entrance the second gate opened. “Good Girl” I thought.  On entering the lock I discovered Jan had only opened the one gate, the other had been blown open by the wind.  The direction of the wind was directly behind us and blowing straight into the lock.  When Jan closed one gate and walked around the lock to the opposite gate the wind would blow the first gate open again.  I was down in the lock on the boat attempting to control it with the wind blowing up my fundamental orifice.  We were going to be there all afternoon if we didn’t adopt a different strategy.  Rather than waste her time with the lower gates I suggested to Jan that she open a paddle.  The theory being that the water flowing into the lock would hold the lower gates closed.  It worked!

Surprisingly the wind wasn’t a strong above the lock and we cruised on in relatively calm conditions mooring below Slapton Lock.  John (nb Waimaru) left us a comment suggested we use the tap above the lock as it’s a ‘good filler’.  We’ll probably do that tomorrow.