Fenny Stratford Canal Festival

We arrived at Fenny Stratford early  and managed to successful pick up our ordered items from Halford and Argos. It's great that courier companies and the stores have got together it's ideal for us as we don't have a delivery address. We were left with a few days to organise ourselves before the festival on Sunday, although on Friday it was pretty much heavy rain all day.

I went for a bit of an explore with Dudley and came across Caldecotte Lake which was huge and so much going on for a Thursday evening. 

Hard to believe this is Milton Keynes

Sunday arrived and we had a little trip round the Fenny Poppers Festival area which was the High Street, lots of stalls were going up and the fair was setting up. Back at the canal it was all go as well with the traders setting up for the Canal Festival and a few stalls as well. We set up our displays and people starting arriving, we weren't expecting it to be too busy as it was the first canal festival to be held there and we weren't sure if many people would venture down from the High Street. Well I'm pleased to say we were wrong and we had a very busy and successful day, in fact our second best trading day to date. We even had a visit from the Mayor and Mayoress of Milton Keynes and they are now the happy owners of two pens.

All set up ready for the crowds

The Pen Maker hard at work

The Mayor making his purchases

In the evening the organiser Rosemary and her husband Paul had very kindly laid on a BBQ in their garden for all the trades as a way of saying thank you for our support. All we had to do was bring what we wanted to drink, we had a lovely evening and for once we ate properly after a busy trading day. 

We were going to head off on Monday but were told there was an Ikea about a 10 minute walk and we wanted to get some more display frames so plans changed and we went to Ikea instead and left Fenny on Tuesday. We stopped at Campbell Park and managed to get a mooring on the park side. 

Park side mooring

One of the sculptures in the park

And another one

LJ just beyond the pond

Today we left in the lovely sunshine and did the journey through Cosgrove lock carrying on to the bottom of the Stoke Bruerne flight. It was a fairly quiet journey and would have been quieter if we hadn't seen all the Wyvern hire boats out.

17 Miles and 2 locks

TOTAL 423.5 miles and 390 locks