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Route Plan for Honeymoon


Richardcn

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Canal Plan offers you some assumptions about day length, If you want to cruise for 4 hours or 10 hours you can reset the standard 7 hour cruising day. If you want to make stops then you need to allow time. If you want to do Bletchley Park don't hope to make it quick it's a long day for me anyway. However your interest and your wife's interest may be different. I could spend another whole day there anytime, but if it doesn't interest you/her that would cost you LOTS of Bluewater vouchers

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I used to live in Lewes and would watch the paragliders taking off from the high point on the South Downs, beyond the Cliffe end of town. Can't remember the name of the high crop of land, but the paragliders were one of the cool things about the scenery around Lewes (when you're a teenager, Lewes seems dull compared to cool stuff). :)

Mount Caburn

Ah Mount Thigh-burn. Oh how I wish I was that fit again. On a good day I have stomped up there in 10-12 mins 3 times with 20+ Kg of kit on my back. Flying does that to one! In fact it is extremely painful not flying so I generally try not to look up (unsucessfully) on good flying days or talk about flying! The general route out of Devil's Dyke tends to bring them right over our house though so I cannot escape the pain until we move onboard permanently!

 

Richard

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Canal Plan offers you some assumptions about day length, If you want to cruise for 4 hours or 10 hours you can reset the standard 7 hour cruising day. If you want to make stops then you need to allow time. If you want to do Bletchley Park don't hope to make it quick it's a long day for me anyway. However your interest and your wife's interest may be different. I could spend another whole day there anytime, but if it doesn't interest you/her that would cost you LOTS of Bluewater vouchers

Lol yes, I mentioned cinema and meal etc as ideas on our stopovers last night and in response she said "... or shopping". I'll try and avoid the cities then! I wonder, if I say 'It's shoes OR a narrowboat but it CANNOT be both' what the outcome will be!

 

Richard

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hi all

 

Well we're back from our honeymoon so I just thought that I'd report back on our adventure. What a fantastic week! Everything went according to plan and the weather was absolutely fantastic, how often can you say that at this time of the year. Blisworth Tunnel was pretty scary on the way down as I'd not had the time, with all of the wedding preparations, to pick out the detail from the route map and so I hadn't expected to be in it for quite so long! Added to that we made the beginners mistakes of not turning on all of the interior lights nor checking the angle of the headlamp. That made it pretty tricky especially as we had only been on the boat for 30 mins at that point! We survived using teamwork though so maybe it was a good tester for the honeymoon ?. We didn't get as far as we expected but we soon learnt to go with the flow and replan daily. We made it up the Wendover Arm, tricky but short and great close-up views of a Kingfisher there and then we moored at the Grand Junction Arms and had a great meal before heading back north the next day. We had a few minor hiccups along the way, upset an Aussie couple by prepping a lock on the way up the Marsworth Flight a bit early, I did apologise to both of them but I don't think that helped as they later caught us up at a pair of locks on the way home and rather than share with us they stayed aboard and let us go on alone. That was the only negative experience that we had with all of the dozens of people that we met or shared locks with, so many lovely friendly people! Another, albeit quickly resolved, crisis was finding that the top pound at Bulbourne Junction was almost empty when we arrived at 7.30am having set off 2 minutes earlier. A paddle had been left open (although I was told that even without the paddle it drains every night). It was quite shocking at first to see the water level so low and for a minute or two, whilst I went to close the paddle and check the lower locks, I was a bit concerned that we would be stuck for hours! Once I realised the (obvious) solution though we were on our way again within about 15 minutes. We made it to our mooring at Fenny for overnight stops in both directions and went to Bletchley Park as suggested by some of you, a very interesting place indeed but we left early as the previous couple of days of heavy locking had left us pretty tired, honest it was the locking ?. We really needed and enjoyed the long lock-free sections after Fenny and we were lucky enough to share the Stoke Bruerne flight with another couple which tested my boat handling skills a little but made it all the more fun (and quicker of course). It was a great feeling rising up in the top lock with another boat, with the sun shining, onlookers ('gongoozlers', I believe) and boats parked (oops - moored) everywhere. We found a spot nearby luckily and had a nice meal at the pub before our last night aboard. We did the tunnel first light on Sat morning and it was a breeze, I almost hoped that we'd meet another boat in the tunnel just for the experience! The only rain that fell on us all week was for 10 mins on the other side of the tunnel, almost as if the canal was giving us a warning that it can't always be as warm and as pleasant as the previous week had been. Before we reached Gayton the rain abaited so that we could unload in the dry. I loved the way that the servicing crew just waved me to 'breast-up' (I believe that's the term) whilst they continued refuelling etc the other boats, how trusting they were to allow us to complete such a manouevre after only 7 days aboard, I did though ?. It was a fantastic week, it really was and we'd like to thank you all for your kind advice. There was one (possible) issue with the boat but I'll post that separately before I follow it up with the marina if I feel it necessary.

 

Thanks Guys

Richard & Paula

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Yay that was us . I took great delight in watching the faces of those that we passed, boaters and walkers, as they did a double-take after reading the bunting. Almost 100% of women that read it gave us hearty congratulations with big smiles on their faces like we'd made their day, the percentage for men was somewhat less although equally as hearty when given. It was a marvellous week without a doubt!

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