Dec 17th
A sunset and sunrise 12 hours apart!
 |
| Sunset 16th Dec |
 |
| Sunrise 17th Dec |
Pretty spectacular and not something seen together. I took this from the web
A red sunset followed by a very red sunrise (about 12 hours later) often means lots of dust/particles in the air, indicating approaching fair weather from the west (red sunset = good weather ahead) but potentially messy weather coming (red sunrise = warning) or just the same atmospheric conditions persisting, often linked to high pressure or wildfire smoke, scattering blue light to reveal reds and oranges. The key is light scattering through more atmosphere and particles like dust, pollution, or moisture, making longer-wavelength reds visible.
So now I've given you all a bit of this extremely useful bit of information, back to the blog.
15th December
We left the next day, the noise of the trains were tolerable but getting slightly further from the railway seemed like a good idea, especially as wherever we stopped would be our home for the next 5 or 6 days. Our destination, then, was Nether Heyford, ideal for the small 'One Stop' grocery store and the butchers a short walk down a country lane and best of all, no noise from the trains at all. The weather was also iffy, rain, torrential at times came and went throughout our stay, but that was nothing to the constant wind gusts making FS a rock and a roll and the sleepless nights it caused of an unwelcome rattling coming from 'we knew not where! We just hunkered down, stoked up the fire, found a jigsaw to do and sat it out for 5 days.
It was today, Saturday 20th, when we pulled pins and left for Long Buckby. Our delay of a day was because we re-read the CRT stoppage notice of when the locks opened and realised that, although they were due to complete the stoppage on the 19th, the locks wouldn't reopen until 4 pm that day. Fully expecting a long queue, we deemed it best to delay getting to the bottom of Long Buckby flight until later in the day. So it was 9 am when we left, stopped for diesel at Rugby boats and a few yards further on, a water stop to fill the tank.
Arrived at the bottom lock a tad too late to buddy up with an ascending boat, we saw them in the distance and did wonder if they had seen us. But no, resigned ourselves to be by ourselves going up the flight but then, coming out of the marina, another boat. Yea...we had a buddy after all.
 |
| On the approach to the lock. Dark Blue boat was mooring. |
Bless, he admitted he was 78, had only just bought the boat (in fact tonight would be his first night on board) and although he had been boating before, was no longer the agile person he used to be (Amen to that! How many of us are!!) Ian helped as much as he could, we made sure to allow him to go on the side where the ladder was nearest to the stern (yep he said he would do his bit by climbing the ladder and pulling paddles) and I suggested we go through one gate to save him from stopping to close his gate. Such a nice chap and, although we took longer to ascend the flight than normal, enjoyed his company immensely.
Moorings were hard to find once we left the top lock. Our locking buddy found one soon after Norton Junction, and I managed to get FS at the end of a long line of boats right by the bridge. Thankfully, plenty of room for boats to came past.
 |
| Top lock Long Buckby |
Tomorrow will be an early start. We want to make either Mkt Bosworth or Shackerstone on the Ashby by the 24th, in time for our son-in-law to pick us up Christmas evening. There is still a long way to go!
And the reason for the stoppage,
New lock gates top lock, Long Buckby
No comments:
Post a Comment