On Wednesday we were conscious of the start of autumn on the first of September as we left Norton Junction under a cloud, as it were. Coats that we had not worn for months came out.
We turned left at the junction and onto the Leicester Arm of the Grand Union Canal. Before long we had to pull over into the queue for the Watford Lock flight. We had just passed Watford Gap Services on the M1.
The locks didn’t open until 10:00 and the queue was rapidly building up behind the first boat that had arrived at 03:00 that morning.
The locks are formed (looking from the south), of two single locks, a staircase of four, and a final single lock. Together they lift the canal 16 m (52 ft 6 in) to the "Leicester Summit", which it maintains all the way to Foxton Locks.
The staircase locks fill and empty from side ponds rather than into each other. They were built to carry narrowboats, and the system was opened in 1814. In the early 20th century there were plans to build an inclined plane similar to that at Foxton as part of a scheme to allow the passage of barges, but the plan was abandoned when the inclined plane at Foxton proved uneconomic.
When the Grand Union Canal was formed in 1929, there were further proposals to widen the flight as part of the modernisation going on elsewhere on the Grand Union's network, but these plans did not develop further.
The locks are hemmed in by the Roman Watling Street (now the A5 road), the M1 motorway, and the West Coast Main Line railway, which all fit through the narrow Watford Gap, between two hill systems.
Lock keepers and C&RT volunteers helped to make progress and control the traffic though the locks. Many boaters chose to stand around by their boats in the queue chatting rather than helping at the locks to speed other narrowboats through more quickly.
We finally got into the lock system and made our way to the C&RT Service Station after the top lock. We went through the 1,258 yard-long Crick Tunnel and moored up at Crick.
There was a lot of water dripping from the roof of the tunnel and the Yorkshireman on Osprey, the boat behind us said “next time I go through that tunnel I shall have my shower gel and loofah ready”!
We walked into town and had chunky cheesy chips, naughty but nice, in The Wheatsheaf pub before shopping in the Co-op and walking back to the wharf.
It was nice to see a book swap in a heritage phone box in the village.
The village of Crick probably takes its name from the Celtic word for 'hill' (Cruc). Crack's Hill, alongside the canal, is one of a number of popular walks in and around the village. It seems likely that the village first came into existence somewhere in the post-Roman period - though Crick's western parish boundary is formed by the Roman Watling Street, and traces of a single Roman building were found within the area of the present-day village, so there has been occupation in this area for a very long time!
Indeed, some of the buildings looked like they had been in existence for a while.
The parish church is St Margaret of Antioch and The Domesday book records that there was a Christian presence in the village of Crick. There has been a church on the site of St Margaret’s since about 700AD, when the first Saxon church was built beside the ancient road which went from Oxford to Leicester.
Steve and Vera checked out the Royal Oak, one of three pubs in the village.
We watched the penultimate episode of The Handmaid’s Tale Series 3 and Coronation Street before going to bed.
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