A graveyard of football dreams

The deserted Rushden & Diamonds stadium

Irthlingborough is a routine stop-over for Nene boaters, with nearly 400 yards of quality, bollarded moorings. Once there were showers, toilet facilities and rubbish disposal but all those are long gone.
It's a sad story – and not just for smelly boaters desperate for a washroom! It's a sorry tale of football dreams dissolving into nightmare. The moorings were built alongside the new stadium complex for Rushden & Diamonds football club all financed by Max Griggs, the man behind Doc Martens Airwear boots, also then made in an adjoining factory. For a while all went swimmingly; the club was promoted up through the non-league ranks and into Div2 of the Football League.
But then, as so often, the money started to run out. Griggs couldn't afford to keep financing the club, it changed hands a couple of times, slipped back out of the Football League and finally out of existence altogether in 2011. The huge modern site, of stadium, sports centre, restaurants and car parks now sits idle and deserted. It's like a football graveyard – the grounds immaculately maintained yet not a sight or sound of football life.
We'd stopped there after a short run from Ditchford to make the short uphill walk to the town for supplies at the local Tesco Local. It's never been the most desirable of towns but like the football club seems to be sliding into the relegation zone from even mid-table respectability.

Swans enjoying dinner on a farmer's wheatfield

All the way along, the river is shadowed by old gravel pit lakes – one of which near Ringstead has become a new 60 boat marina since our last trip but beyond Irthlingborough the scenery becomes increasingly rural and pretty and on another warm, sunny day we spotted a kingfisher, shelduck and several oyster catchers to join the swallows we spotted yesterday. We also saw numerous swans – most of them grazing riverside farm fields. Is it my imagination or has there been a huge swell of swan numbers? I recall a Thameside farmer telling me that swans had stripped his fields of crops worth several hundred thousand pounds one winter. I can't imagine society tolerating a cull of these beautiful birds but will something have to be done at some point to limit their numbers?

Hard work: the dreaded manual Nene lock

To end on a happier note, after sweating over the first two of the Nene's dreaded manual turnwheel lock, we finished the day by tieing up on a traditional river boating mooring - against a rough bank with our pins hammered into the earth and looking across to the attractive (and affluent) little village of Denford. The Nene runs tantalisingly close to so many such places; close but rarely close enough, especially with mooring often so tricky. But here at Denford we've found a perfect little one-boat size slot and around us is total silence. Perfect.

Moored on the bankside overlooking Denford village

Eleven miles and eleven locks

Approaching the picturesque Doddington Lock

 Locks come thick and fast on the upper reaches of the Nene - or 'Nen' (rhymes with 'hen') as the locals call it. But no matter, under the sun of another fine day we made steady progress from the edge of Northampton to where we are now at Ditchford near Irthlingborough.
This stretch of river is almost continuously surrounded by old gravel pits, now fishing lakes, water parks or wildlife reserves - with the odd residential caravan park thrown in. Like the vast Billing Aquadrome we passed first thing in the morning: what a curious hobby it is to buy a vast American motorhome then drive to a car park full of other camper vans on the edge of Northampton and sit beside it reading the Sunday Mirror.
Leaving Northampton behind the river becomes entirely rural, mixing stretches of unprepossessing scrubby flood plains with pretty meadows. Sadly the always popular moorings at Cogenhoe (pronounce it 'cook-know') are off limits, thanks to disreputable boaters leaving rubbish about the place which in the end caused the death of a cow.
A steady succession of locks brought us to the delightful setting of Doddington lock, set among trees and flanked by picturesque mill houses and cottages. Here and at the earlier White Mills lock pieces of semi wasteland between lock cuts and weir streams had been acquired and developed as permanent mooring sites for three or four boats.

The vast solar farm at Wellingborough

The next lock, Wollaston, is flanked by a bigger 'island' with moorings and slightly ramshackle cottage. It was always a favourite of ours: the cottage owner's ultra friendly dog would come and greet boaters in the hope of a biscuit or two. Four years on it was good to see the owner still about though not with his dog any longer. After a slight stroke he couldn't give it the exercise it needed so passed it on to a friend.
Wellingborough is one of the very few towns of any size near the Nene and the approach is marked by a large modern prison which has virtually doubled in size since we were last here. And adjacent to the prison is a vast field of solar panels; line upon line of them all angled to catch the sun. It is a 60 hectare 'solar farm' developed by Lark Energy who have built several of these and which can produce 10MWp – enough to supply 2000 homes.

The handsome Victorian railway viaducts

Wellingborough has a substantial waterfront with plenty of moorings but the constant loud drone of Whitworths flour mills across the river would put anyone off staying there for long. Even if the general ambience of the place did not! We stopped long enough to fill up with water at a recently renewed EA water point. Facilities like these are virtually non-existent on the Nene unfortunately.
Fortunately the town was soon behind and we were back out in a part of the countryside with two major landmarks - a massive 14-arch Victorian railway viaduct (two of them actually set beside each other) and the nearby hillside the massive Chester House. Gutted by fire when we were last here, it has been partially rebuilt though the work, it seems, is ongoing.
Apparently the area round Chester House and farm is a historically important site - it has been a  settlement since Mesolithic times, with archaelogical finds of flint tools, Roman remains and vestiges of a medieval hamlet. Last year the site got a £4m Heritage Lottery grant to open the site to the public and develop an archaelogical resource centre. The things you learn from Wikipaedia!

Tied up below Ditchford Lock by the new moorings

Another discovery of a different sort came at our last lock of the day, Ditchford. A narrowboat got trapped on the weir here in 2012 and sank. It was a well publicised disaster at the time. Less well known is that before it could be retrieved the boat managed to cause £250,000 damage to the foundations of the weir – as the river tried to force its way around the boat it scoured away the footings. The weir is now shut for repairs. We are moored for the night just below the lock near another new mooring site on a weir stream where a new canoe hire operation is also based.

Repairs underway to the damaged Ditchford weir

Off we go!

Smart new liftbridge halfway down the Northampton locks

British Summer Time started a day early for us when we put an end to our winter wanderings and headed eastwards on our 2014 cruise towards the Nene and the Great Ouse rivers.
And we did in glorious summer sunshine, losing layers of clothing by the hour and lockwheeling in tee-shirts by mid-morning.What a far cry from the weather only three days earlier when we'd been climbing the Braunston locks in a blizzard of hail!
The link from the Grand Union Canal to the River Nene at Northampton is down the 17 narrow locks of the Northampton Arm – the first 13 of them in a flight of less than a mile ending under the M1 motorway.
It's a relatively little used route and from memory of our past trips on it, could be overgrown with reeds, shallow in parts and generally rather shabby so it was good to see that things have generally improved. The locks worked, the reeds had been chopped back, a lift-bridge halfway down was smartly restored and painted and on a sunny day all was well.
Save for the drone of the motorway, it's a very rural stretch that drops into the vast floodplain around Northampton but it was a surprise to see how the town has encroached into this space since we were last here. A big new estate has arrived and is still being expanded in a mish-mash of houses, some of which would be certainly be attractive on their own but were cramped together like terra-cotta warriors in an emperor's tomb - a tomb with no gardens (not that you'd want to sit in one with that ever-present whoosh of m-way traffic.

New houses marching across the landscape as Northampton expands

Beyond the houses another rural stretch was more like the old canal we remembered, shallow and rubbish strewn with all the cut reed floating in the water and regularly tangling with the prop.
Soon, though, we were at the final lock by the Carlsberg brewery whose award winning design has not aged well, and then out onto the river. We hoped to find a mooring slot on the town riverfront to shop at the nearby Morrisons. It was always a popular spot to stop but not on Saturday: not a single boat was tied up. We wondered why.
Maybe because the whole area round the shops and waterside flats is an utter mess - rubbish everywhere and the few litter bins overflowing - cans, bags, even broken glass strewn about. All we wanted to do was shop and get out fast. Northampton – you and your council are a disgrace. The whole area is squalid.
We went through the first of the 37 Nene locks at Becketts Park and I remembered how much I loved them. Not. That fiddly little 'Abloy' key forever getting caught in the locks; the absurdly low geared hydraulic paddle gear that needs hundreds of windlass turns to raise and lower. Oh, groan.
It was now 4.30 and we were wondering where to moor. There's a floating pontoon in Becketts Park but it had no boats; just graffiti so we pressed on. No matter, the sun was still warm and we were still enjoying the trip and so was the boat, revelling in the deep, clear water.

Lockwheeling Nene style - finger on the guillotine button at Weston Favel

Some things might have changed since our last trip on the Nene but some hadn't - like the line of decrepit and semi-sunk boats before Rush Mills Lock. Overnight moorings are hard to find on this stretch of the river so we pushed on through the barrage gates that close off the town's washland flood storage zone when the river is getting dangerously high.
Out the other side and, with the sun dropping, we were thinking about a night spent on a lock mooring when we spotted a vacant visitor mooring at Northampton Boat Club, pulled up and were warmly welcomed.
A giant Morrisons pizza, a beer and by 9.00 pm all eyes on board Harry were closing after a day in the sun and 21 locks. Karaoke night at the boat club bar would not be getting the benefits of the Nb Harry crew!

Storm dodging

The waterlogged towpath at Braunston

We have spent the last few days in a largely successful game of dodge-the-storms, moving up from just south of Bugbrooke to Braunston where we are now moored.
We set off on Thursday from our back of beyond mooring and stopped at Bugbrooke for lunch and - I hoped - a foray to the village shop for this rural stretch of the Grand Union is bereft of anything resembling a town.
Bugbrooke is quite a sizeable village of pretty honey coloured stone cottages but the village shop is more dead than alive and we came out with our shopping list largely unticked.
Soon it was raining and our lunch stop became an all-day stop. With provisions running low what better excuse then than to nip across the canal for dinner at The Wharf - a modern-ish pub (or 'bar-restaurant' as it calls itself).
It's a big boozer but cosier than you'd expect inside. The menu wasn't overly encouraging though with a worryingly pretentious sprinkling of 'jus' and 'bed of' as well as some courses that sounded decidedly the weird side of innovative - like a steak and ale pie with the ingredients in tortilla wraps rather than good old pastry.
And when the main courses arrived on square plates – gawd how our hearts sank! Especially with Vicky's rib of beef and mash served in a Lego tower of ingredients and my pork belly sitting amid stripes of yellow and red.
BUT, but they actually tasted bloody good. We swallowed the food and with it our preconceptions. It was damned decent fare.
Unlike last night's meal at The Plough in Braunston which, sadly, was desperate. A sorry, dried up looking piece of lasagne and a burger - big and wholesome but desperately overcooked. The chips were chunky and good though. And the beer was fine. After the rugby watching crowd left we found ourselves alone in the bar until an hour or more later the place started to come to life again. But this is a village pub which is clearly struggling. Sad to see.
In between the two dinners we went up the seven Buckby locks - still as heavy and awkwardly spaced for the lockwheeler (me!) then through the Braunston Tunnel, completely dry inside in contrast to Blisworth, and down the six Braunston locks. The towpath most of the way varying from simply muddy to utterly waterlogged and flooded. Brian the dog point blank refused to walk on it a couple of times. I think he fears for his undercarriage in the mud and water.
Tomorrow, weather permitting, it's a gentle jaunt up to Rugby.

Whatever the weather

We get cabin fever when we've hung around too long in one place so a couple of days ago we decided that, damn the weather, we'd head off north from Milton Keynes.
We had a new plan - I like a plan - and that was to get through Buckby Locks before they shut for maintenance, then Braunston and up the North Oxford to Rugby. The only thing against us was the weather.
Yesterday, despite the forecasters tales of woe, was delightful - bitingly cold in the wind but bright, sunny. A perfect winter's day. We looped round the edge of Milton Keynes then through Wolverton where the old railway sheds that were cloaked in scaffolding when we were last here have re-appeared all redeveloped while retaining their original structures in an award winning £65m scheme, with blocks of modern flats built opposite.
Apparently Wolverton was the world's first railway town and the works were there because it was mid-distance between London and Birmingham. A rather sorry for itself looking and vegetation shrouded cast iron canal bridge was the original line into the works and built by Robert Stephenson. It's Grade II* listed - and deserves to be better kept than it is.

At Cosgrove the canal travels on an aqueduct over the River Great Ouse and the extent of the river flooding in all directions made us gasp.

Last night we moored at the foot of the seven Stoke Bruerne locks and listened to dire warnings of storm force winds and heavy rain. Well the winds were about this morning but where was the rain? Eventually we decided to chance it and went up the locks teamed with another madcap boater. They really were on a mission – aiming to reach Chester by the 17th. Of February.
Stoke Bruerne was shut (museum and cafe that is) so we pressed on through the Blisworth Tunnel. And still the rain hadn't fallen. In the end I got wetter in the tunnel than outside - huge quantities of water were cascading down from the tunnel ventilation shafts as well as pouring in through drainage holes in the walls.
Tonight the rain has finally reached us and the winds are fiercer still, rattling the doors and windows. But we are safely moored up somewhere in the countryside just short of Bugbrooke.
It's been quite a couple of days!

Inside Milton Keynes

Peace Pagoda at Willen Lakes park

Back when I was a young hack I remember negotiating a multiplicity of roundabouts in the fledgling Milton Keynes to get from the M1 to our typesetters. (Back in the days when there were such people as typesetters in magazine production!)
And roundabouts are all most of us know of the place. Even the canal circles around the edge of it and never gets close to the centre. So this past week it's been a first chance to take a wander around what is by far the most successful of the sixties 'new towns'.

Great views from Campbell Park. Shame about the MacD litter!

Odd as it seems, the roundabouts that enable you to get across the town without ever finding the centre are at the heart of its design. For it is actually pretty much a town without a centre or a heart - that's the whole point. The architectural theory behind it was that a town of the future didn't need to radiate from a centre but instead should be a metropolis of smaller business or residential areas linked together by a web of roads for easy access. And it works.

Clever sculpture of memorial day columns at Campbell Park

'The Face' - Campbell Park again

The clever thing is that, unlike many traditional towns, where pedestrians and cyclists battle for survival among cars and trucks on ring roads and one way streets carved among the older streets, MK successfully separates traffic from people. You can walk or cycle from place to place without ever encountering a car.

Open air theatre

There is a centre - a shopping centre anyway - and we are moored on the edge of Campbell Park which is the closest the canal gets to that. It's a ten minute walk away but though the walk is great, the shopping centre isn't. Unless you like shopping, of course, in which case it's probably okay though the low-rise shops look rather old-fashioned to anyone brought up on trips to Bluewater and the like.
No, the parks and walks are the best part of the town - a delight and a surprise. Immaculately tended, even now in mid-winter, with little litter, tarmac pathways and lots to see from urban art to a Buddhist Peace Pagoda, they are superb. Brian the Dog is particularly impressed!
As well as Campbell Park, with its fine views, open air theatre, cricket ground and artworks, there is Willen Lakes, for bird watching and the 'tree cathedral' - yes, a plantation of various tree species in the layout and scale of a cathedral.
The only thing that's wrong at the moment is the weather – a good soaking yesterday and another rain and hailstorm today which has driven us back inside just as we were about to go for another park walk. Sorry about that, Brian.

The past is another country

Spectacular rainbow near Ivinghoe

And one that is rapidly disappearing in the mists of time. This entry, then, is one intended to try and clear those mists in my own head before a complete and irreversible fog descends. (Since I haven't posted since early November I doubt anyone out there will be still following our snail-like progress through winter so this is a just a brief memo to brain on where we are now and how we got here.)
Let's work backwards - it's easier to try and fill in the mental gaps that way. We're are now in Milton Keynes and have been for virtually a week. Getting here was a slow dawdle up the Grand Union, with various breaks for family visits, after we finally left London where we had been pottering between Paddington Basin, Kensal Green and Greenford becoming steadily disenchanted with the squalor and mess along large parts of the Paddington Arm of the canal.

Modelling my smart 'onesy'

In Uxbridge I tried with only partial success to cure a persistent fuel leak from the JP's fuel filter before we finally left the cityscape for the countryside, wandering past Denham, spending a couple of days in Watford, then the edge of Hemel
Hempstead - a sprawling old new-town looking very scruffy around parts by the canal - before reaching Berkhamsted, which is exactly the opposite: a compact and extremely affluent commuter belt town, full of boutique shops and up-market restaurants. All the same, the canal which was once a big part of the place's prosperity is still embraced with some decent pubs and tidy towpaths.

Canalside Christmas lights in Berkhamsted

There are a lot of locks on the climb out of London but by Cowroast we had gone through 45 and were at the summit of the canal. And not once did we find ourselves sharing one of the locks with another boat - so few boats seem to travel at all in the winter months.
We found  wide locks on our own a trial in our little boat, Star, but in the 55ft Harry we were untroubled - a bit more boat length and a lot more experience in working paddles to keep the boat pinned to the side in the filling locks made the difference.
Slightly nervously we left the boat moored over Christmas and New Year at the end of the summit level, at the top of the Marsworth locks. Fortunately all was well on our return - except it was bloody cold inside and took a good day or two to warm up properly.

Winter cruising on an empty Grand Union

In bright winter sunshine we spent a couple of days walking round the Marsworth reservoirs that feed the canal before moving on - downhill now - and turning into the narrowbeam Aylesbury Arm. The Arm was shut for most of last year because of a lock collapse. It's a lock right alongside the gigantic £150m new Arla milk processing plant. Seemingly the earthworks for the building of the plant and the collapse of the lock are unconnected. Hmmm.
Last time we did this 17-locks each way trip it was to moor at the Aylesbury Canal Society's moorings at the terminus of the Arm. Since then their site has been sold for redevelopment and the Society now has a very smart new home on the edge of town - and still welcomes visitors. It's a state of the art place with a clubhouse and dry docks being built and impressive moorings. We liked the place (and the super-friendly members) so much we joined the Society.

The giant Arla dairy plant by the Aylesbury Arm

Back on the main line the next port of call was Leighton Buzzard, after a one-day stop near Ivinghoe. A curious place is LB: there's a useful canalside Tesco and even more useful Aldi if you don't like Tesco prices but the general sprawl is unappealing. Walk into the small town centre and you discover a completely different LB - a bourgeois little High Street of niche shops like ice cream makers, chocolatiers, specialist bakers and boutiques. No recession here, then.
Finally, via overnights at  Soulbury and Stoke Hammond we did the long drag into Milton Keynes where we are now, on the edge of Campbell Park and just beyond the start of the proposed Bedford-Milton Keynes Waterway.