Day 107 and we left Cosgrove early; didn’t meet much but at first but always at places you don’t want to – aqueduct, bridge and narrow spots –  typical. A short day today as we went to the cinema to see Incredibles 2, we didn’t even have the excuse of some suitably aged grandchldren. When my cousin stayed in our house with her two children they thought we had bought them some suitable DVDs one of my sisters had to assure them that this wasn’t for them, just J & D’s normal collection. Found a mooring with shade as still too hot and we knew the boat was going to be shut up for several hours. A really tight fit J had walked bout the towpath and paced out the space, about 6″ to spare. One of the other boats in the area told us she had thought the space was too short for her 57′ boat, One boat next to us had a basset hound; having been brought up with this breed I really wouldn’t want to live with one on a boat – this one was huge too, for those who knew our dogs this one was bigger than Gambit. The boat the other end of us had a cat which was very relaxed. A little rain in the evening and the promise from the forecast of a cooler day tomorrow, however tonight still over 25 centigrade in our cabin after 10pm. At least there are less mossies, having healed the 20 plus bites acquired on the Nene it is really nice not to be acquiring anymore even if there are still quite a few insects about. At least J isn’t flapping about quite so much at night.

I know a lot of people don’t like Milton Keynes but for someone walking / cycling it is really nice to be away from the traffic and there a lot of green spaces (well normally green – somewhat brown at the moment).

Day 108 and a long day trying to make up some of the time from yesterday’s short run but also needed to do some domestics and shopping. Certainly cooler today but not cold, the wind is back. We are definitely in the land of the giants now and there are many broad-beam boats around and we’ve actually seen some moving! Fortunately so far not met one too nasty to deal with. Went through Soulbury Three locks with no problem, in fact D had help from two volunteers. When we went up through these locks last year it took us well over an hour due to people going out of turn and draining pounds. Again we have plenty of water but as the wind got up we stopped short of where we had hoped to but had still made up some of the distance. J being very organised and made some stock and some ratatouille for tomorrow’s supper. Despite cooler day cabin still 23C come bed time.