Country: England
Distance travelled:
Weather: generally overcast

While our water tanks were filling, I walked down to the geocache barely 200m from where we were moored. It was simple to find with a good hint which made it obvious as to its location. I was back at Conquerer before the tank was full and could help get us untied and into the first lock of the day. A total of nine locks in about two miles kept us on our toes and had me looking forward to the lunch we had planned once we were through the lot at Napton-on-the-Hill.

Editors note:  I can’t believe she didn’t mention the pigs.

We stopped in at the shop at bridge 113 to buy some of the provisions we were low in such as cereal and milk. While we were there we spied the water buffalo burgers, and in salute to the animals we had passed in the canal-side fields earlier, we grabbed a few for the next time we cooked onboard. Another interesting foodstuff to try.

Not far from our lunch stop, we reached the stretch of water shared between the Oxford canal and the Grand Union Canal. At this point the Grand Union heads off toward Warwick and Birmingham but I had decided that we will head the other way past Braunston to the Braunston Tunnel. This was another very picturesque stretch of water, as most of the Oxford Canal is, with trees in leaf and the occasional one in flower. I think they are of the apple family as the flowers have a pink hue to them but even if I was close I wouldn’t have known unless they were in fruit anyway.

A little further on we were back in the open fields again and surrounded with golden canola in flower. In the middle of all this, we came across a crazy swan, a cob, guarding his mate while she brooded their eggs. The silly bird chased us some distance up the canal, even having a few pecks at the rear bumper and rudder of Conquerer. Luckily for us, we outdistanced him eventually and when another boat passed us going the other way, he decided we were vanquished and headed after the other vessel.

Eventually we reached Braunston, a little earlier than we were expecting, and we decided to head on through the Braunston Tunnel and hopefully find a pub on the far side for dinner. The six locks at Braunston are all wide beam locks with room for two 6′ wide boats such as Conquerer. Unfortunately we were the only ones heading up so we got jounced around quite a lot every time the paddles were opened and the water came rushing in. Eventually we were at the top and headed determinedly into the tunnel.

From Wikipedia:
Braunston Tunnel is 2,042 yards (1,867 m) in length. Built by Jessop and Barnes, the tunnel has no towpath and is 4.8m wide by 3.76m high. It was opened in 1796. Its construction was delayed by soil movement and it was probably the resulting movement that lead to the tunnel having a slight ‘S’ bend in its length. There is room for two 7 ft beam boats to pass. There are three air shafts along its length.

It was long, dark and drippy and for the first time in a long time I actually started to feel a little claustrophobic. I was dreading another boat coming from the other direction since we couldn’t stay off either wall when we had the entire tunnel to ourselves. How on earth would we have managed if there was another boat oncoming? Someone from another boat back at the locks had told Mark to turn on all the cabin lights and the headlight so as to make us as visible as possible and to shut the rear hatches so as to preserve our night vision. I kept my eye out for another boat coming with all their lights on but all I could see was the other end of the tunnel in the far distance, growing larger gradually but incredibly slowly.

Eventually we were out and the scenery on the far side was so attractive, it felt like a reward for all our efforts. Pinned to the first bridge we passed under was a sign stating that the local pub in Welton, the White Horse, was just half a mile up the road and after some discussion we all decided that we could probably manage to walk that far. It turned out that the sign had been put there by an earlier publican of the White Horse who had a very approximate idea of distance and to top it off when we finally arrived, they only did meals Wednesday to Sunday. However after discussion with his customers, the very friendly guy behind the bar recommended another pub where we could get a meal and called us a taxi. We moved on to The New Inn, ate dinner, and taxied back to Conquerer to sleep.