Oundle, Ashton & unexpected visitors

I'm delighted to say that our 4 lock cruise on Friday to Ashton Lock, by Oundle, was pleasantly uneventful - wet though. Wet is infinitely preferable to windy and it wasn't wet enough to bring the river levels up. 

The sun appeared on Saturday and we have unpacked the chairs and been sitting out on the bank for the first time this year. Lovely to just sit and chill and watch the pair of red kites which are nesting in the tree on our 'island'

Friday evening we walked into the village of Ashton which is part of the Ashton Estate; this property was for sale with a guide price of around £985,00. I guess they don't come on the market very often

The Chequered Skipper on the village green is dog friendly and served real ale but we didn't try the food

Sue and I walked into Oundle on Sunday to fetch food and I was delighted to find samphire has come into season along with purple sprouting - still no English asparagus yet; everything is so up the creek with this year's weather. This vivid blue sky could be anywhere in the Med though; not a cloud in sight.

One for the boys -some rather nice machines parked in the town square.

Not long after we arrived back at the boats, Debbie and Kevin made a surprise visit but they didn't bring their dogs. It's not on you know, puppy Herbie would have loved a rumble with Penny and Muttley.

Anybody would think it was summer

The moorings here are on an island surrounded by weirs which is lovely as there is no 'through' traffic on either foot or bike

It's our own little piece of heaven

I'm so glad we decided to take our time on this river. It'll be quite a shock to the system when we hit the canals again; dodging speeding cyclists and queuing at locks! It will be over a year since we've seen a canal

We had another heavenly Sunday lunch on board No Problem today. I could get so used to these.

The access to the boats is a paddle across this weir - I was going to give it a try but I couldn't get the dogs over the gate so I had to return by the long way round. No Problem is moored behind us.