I walked into Blisworth this morning to buy the newspaper. It poured rain about 5 minutes after I returned. After lunch we decided to walk to Gayton Marina beyond the junction. It's where we hired a boat from in 2007. The boat was there - Pied Billed Grebe.
We bought a couple of coffee mugs in the little chandlery at Gayton and some free-range eggs on the way back. In case of rain we took our golf umbrellas on our walk but lucky for us it held out until about 5 minutes after we got back. Again!
It's interesting how differently we look at marinas now. Before we had our own boat and spent all those weeks of Winter in a marina, we hadn't given a lot of thought to the details. Gayton has floating pontoons and I didn't like walking on those at all. I imagine it would be a whole lot worse covered in snow or ice! Here at Blisworth the pontoons are quite short. It's fine for us when we're only here a couple of days but I wouldn't want to deal with this for a whole Winter.
We do like this marina though. They have a great attitude towards the boaters and appear to go out of their way to make it a pleasant environment for them. I guess that's more likely to happen when there's nothing else at all in the marina except the moored boats. There used to be a boat brokerage service but they've moved out now. There's a lounge for the boaters, lovely garden areas with seating and on this side they have their little barbeque deck. Fantastic.
I forgot to mention the other day that a blog reader called out to us just as we prepared to move off from our Grafton Regis mooring. I was inside the boat and heard Mick talking to the folk on the boat passing us. I didn't see the boat name but they waved furiously to me as I peeked through the side hatch window. Mick said they'd called out "Hello Mick!". He finds it all a bit amusing. The week before he had Andy from nb Festina Lente turn and say hello to him in the pub at Braunston. I was catching up on reading some blogs today and discovered who it was that called out to him at Grafton Regis. It was James and Debbie... nb Lois Jane. So, hello to you both. We might cross paths again and have time for a chat!
Today :
1. Gayton Junction
2. The toll house at the junction
3. Entrance to the marina (our pram hood next to nb Queen of Sodor)
4. The marina building from the canal
5. Roof being re-thatched in Blisworth
6. Marina barbeque deck
7. There we are... moored up
8. On our walk to Gayton
9. The boat that started it all
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