Plans gone tits up (again)!

Lots of fabulous pictures  to post from some stunning walks in this Northamptonshire countryside but, for now, the River Nene has the better of us again. Pulled pins at 8.45am this morning into the adjacent Wadenhoe lock with water heaving over the top. As soon as I hit the 'raise gate button' MR lurched forward and hardly held her ground in full reverse. Even after the timer had finished MR kept trying to dive through the guillotine bottom gate as I raised it. Yarwood was pinned against the sidewall. We made very rapid time to Lilford lock and are brested up with Yarwood again on the lock moorings (with the blessing of the EA river inspector) and this is why...

Farewell to Thrapston..

...time to leave the mooring of a zillion bunnies; Daisy is bringing home too many - most have been rescued but, sadly, not all. Rotten cat. As if she doesn't get enough Felix!

and some dogs won't accept that a chair is occupied

 similarly, some people won't accept that bin usage has been withdrawn; I commented on this to a local dog walker who said that the bin had been here (in use) for years

 so what will happen to the accumulating poo bags now, I wonder

 A quick check on the airdraft at the next low footbridge

 showed all systems go at nearly 2.3 metres

Later in the day we drove back to Northampton to granddaughter Chenelle's 8th birthday party - chaos and I still have a headache from the noise levels, but I'm sure she had a great time; they're off to Thorpe Park tomorrow - it seems that birthdays last longer now!

A rude awakening....

....from the chap brested up to us overnight. From 6.35am he was running water, wandering around making the boats grate (he had ONE fender on board) and trundling down the gunwhales between the boats before finally leaving around 7.30. I know I'm a grumpy old woman but I do think you could be a little bit more considerate when brested up to someone. What's worse, and for security reasons I won't air this publicly, our perverse dogs never uttered a sound! We gave up and got up (again) - I once had dreams of staying in bed until 9 when I retired. Daisy decided to ignore the kerfuffle; these are her paws hanging out from under the blanket she sleeps within - disturb her at your peril. Incidentally, she fell in again when we were at Denford, it's become such a regular occurence I forgot to mention it.

 A fair bit of boat scrubbing was undertaken this morning on both Yarwood and MR. Joe was off in search of hardware and G off to his mums via a quick hello to NB No Problem so it was after lunch before we set off on the daily dog walk to find a new village.

 This little lot look a bit like a herd of buffalo in this pic but it's just a large flock of black sheep

 The view from one of the bird hides at Titchmarsh Nature Reserve

 Another village sign for my collection - this one is very detailed

 and back out again via the very pretty Mill and Titchmarsh Lock

 Somewhere along the way I warned Lesley that Fletcher was rolling, "he's just drying himself", she said. Labradors drying themselves? ...Nice fox poo Fletcher ....phoorrrrr!

 My brave little soldier in his muzzle

 Most of this missed us

and home again 4 hours later with Daisy, now out of bed, enjoying the heat of the evening sun

PS Both Lesley and I have had an identical weird (not nasty) comment on our blogs in the last 6 weeks. Lesley has a theory that its an auto advertising trigger so let's put it to the test; here's  what we think are the trigger words - flooring, carpets, tiles. Watch this space!