June 22nd

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  We soon located the pub, The Falcon Inn and popped in for a wee drink.  It was so nice that we went and sat in the beer garden and enjoyed the sunshine.  Then it was back to the boat for chicken curry (one I had prepared several weeks earlier in true Blue Peter fashion!) yummy!   What really amazes me is discovering these beautiful old villages which are situated only about 40 minutes drive from our house in Cambridge!  If we hadn�t been on the boat we would have had no cause to pass through places like Wadenhoe or Fotheringhay and look what we would have missed!  Clive and I were just discussing this the other day and commenting on the fact that when we were youngsters one of the things that families did at the weekends in those days was to �go for a run in the car�.  Well at least that is how we referred to it up in Yorkshire.  We would take a picnic and just set off and go somewhere, often without a destination, we would just set off in one direction and see where we got to, often not all that far from home.  Of course life�s pleasures were simpler then, no TV, no computers, etc one made one�s own entertainment and going for a run was one of them.  I remember as a child pleading with my daddy to take me �to look at the lights�.  This entailed driving up to one of the high spots in Huddersfield such as Castle Hill, or Lindley Moor or Nont Sarah�s at night then looking back at all the twinkling lights of the town spread out like fairy lights � how simple was that � I just loved it!  Try fobbing a modern day child off with something like that these days � oh no, they would look at you as if you had gone stark staring mad!  They want to go to Alton Towers or Legoland or Gulliver�s Island or somewhere like that, which costs an arm and a leg!  Oh those were the days!   Monday June 22nd � time to say farewell to Fotheringhay.   A few minutes after we had left our mooring we went around a bend in the river and looking back we had a really good view of the mound and the church.   There is not a lot to report from today�s cruise really other than to say again what beautiful countryside this is, the Nene is a really lovely waterway.  We did share a few locks with another boat called Rosie Piper � interestingly the couple on board had lived in Huddersfield for a while back in the 70s as the husband worked at ICI and his wife, who was from Magharafelt in Northern Ireland, went to college in Coleraine, which is where I used to work when we lived over there � small world!   We had intended to moor up for the night at a place called Wansford but when we got there we couldn�t find any moorings at all � even though they are clearly marked in our mapbook - I think they must have been a figment of the imagination as far as the cartographer is concerned!  So we pressed on.  The next moorings we knew of were at Sibson but when we got there the moorings were full so we had to continue on a bit further.  We were just approaching the next lock at Alwalton when we spotted a narrowboat moored up to the right of the lock up a little backwater and there was room for another boat so we pulled in there.  I went to speak to the lady on the other boat to check that we weren�t on a private mooring, she assured me that we weren�t.  She was quite a chatty little lady (don�t say it!) and by the end of the conversation I had learned that she and her husband spend six months a year on their boat and the rest in their cottage in Northants.  He is 85 and she is 78!  She said �we have had to slow down a bit, can�t jump on and off the boat as well as we used to as we had a horrendous car accident last year�!  Obviously she doesn�t count their ages as a reason for slowing down!   So here we are � it�s very peaceful indeed.  We have made a note of it in our map-book because it isn�t mentioned as a mooring site, even though there are actually pins provided to tie up to!  So how come they mention fictitious moorings that aren't there yet fail to mention perfectly good moorings that are!  Bizarre!!