Saturday 15 August 2015

Blisworth Canal Festival

Wow what a busy weekend and soooo many people. The organisers did a fantastic job and as Festival HQ was in front of us we could see and hear all the hard work going on throughout the weekend.

Friday evening Peter and Heather came round, complete with cider, wine and crisps and we sat on our back deck listening to the music from Blisworth Marina opposite. We had a lovely evening catching up.

Peter and Heather emerging from Blisworth Tunnel

Saturday we were up early and headed off to the Chapel for the Boaters Breakfast, again very well organised and a fantastic fry up that would keep us going for a while. We got back to LJ and started setting up our displays, it wasn't long before the bells rang at the church indicating that the festival was open. Dudley was on meeting and greeting duty as usual until it got too hot. Again we met lots of lovely people who have been following us on Facebook and many sales were made.


We're behind the gazebo on the towpath

Busy with people stopping to look
Sunday morning started cloudy but still warm but it wasn't long before the sun made an appearance but luckily it wasn't as hot as Saturday. There seemed to be more people around and at times the pathway got very congested. More sales were made and we had our busiest day to date, leaving our displays looking quite empty by the end of the day, not that I'm complaining.

Another busy day
During the weekend there were reports that the A43 was gridlocked due to the amount of people flooding to Blisworth. This has to be one of the best festivals around and it's free to visitors. Three distinct areas choc a bloc with things to do. A festival field full of entertainment, a village full of open gardens, breakfasts in chapels and cream teas in churches and to top it of rows of decorated historic and trading narrowboats. We had a fantastic time and received a warm welcome from the organisers, villagers and festival attendees (all 58,000 of them).

On Monday we set off just after 8am just after Kit and Mike had passed by, we didn't get far as there was a wide beam coming through the tunnel from Stoke Bruerne and we had to wait, good thing though there was also a widebeam in the queue ahead of us which meant that we wouldn't be passing anything in the tunnel. So after a delay we set off and shared the Stoke Bruerne locks with Kit and Mike, we continued on to Cosgrove passing through the lock and stopping at the bottom before the aqueduct.

Horse tunnel under the canal

Moored at Cosgrove
Tuesday we continued our journey to Fenny Stratford as James had a DPD delivery to Halfords in Bletchley and I had a couple of Ebay items being delivered to Argos. We decided to moor up in our allocated spot for this weekends first ever Fenny Stratford Festival, so we would both get on with getting stocks of pens and cases made.

Over the River Great Ouse

On this aqueduct

Amazing to think we're only a few miles from Milton Keynes


21 miles and 9 locks

TOTAL 406.5 miles and 388 locks





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