Crick to Aylesbury via the Isle of Wight
Leaving Xilion Rose safely moored in Crick Marina, we arrived in Thame and picked up our second love, our 1953 Sunbeam Alpine, which had been living in our daughters garage while we cruised the UK canals. After a magic long weekend in the Isle of Wight with the Thame Classic Car Club, we returned to Crick to continue our way down to Aylesbury and the Aylesbury Canal Society.
Leaving Crick, we immediately had to negotiate the Crick Tunnel, not overly long at 1,528 yds, but a bit of a shock to the system at 8 o’clock in the morning. After the tunnel you arrive at the Watford lock flight, where Annie’s training at last weeks Foxton lock flights gave us a smooth trouble free passage, taking it easy, we decided to moor by Hayford Wharf, where we came across the “Elderly Duck” warning. The following day we made our way to Whilton Marina, the Marina where we originally purchased Xilion Rose from, just over 9 month ago.
As we made our way down towards Aylesbury, we had a bit of a scare when at around 9.30 in the evening, just as we were settling down to a nice bottle of red wine, Annie said that “maybe” she had had enough wine already because she could not stand up straight, it took only a couple of seconds for us to realise that Xilion Rose had developed an alarming list to port (nothing to do with the wine), On checking the canal water level, we found that the area that we had moored in was between two locks, about 500 yds apart, and someone had left the top gates open on both of them, the result was that the pound we were moored in was draining away and Xilion Rose was sitting on the mud. At 9.30. on a wet and blowing night, Annie and myself had to cross the bottom lock gates to close the top gates (on both locks), we then had to fill one lock and then empty it in to the pound where we were moored, after repeating this action a couple of time, Xilion Rose was re-floated and we retired to resume our wine tasting.
The following day we arrived at the Aylesbury Arm, a beautiful canal, only 6.5 miles long, with 16 locks leading to the Aylesbury Basin.
As we are now moored for the winter, the blog updates will continue, but will be less frequent.
Cheers and all the best regards
Annie and Malcolm
Our Sunbeam at the Seaside
Be afraid, these ducks do not take prisoners