Cogenhoe to Irthlingborough - day 2 on the Nene

For those of you not lucky enough to have travelled the Nene, here's how it seems so far.

The river water gets clearer down here and we can see all the "cabbages" we float over. The Nene valley seems to widen although the river itself does not. In fact here and there it's very narrow. Then when the river is wide, some of the bridge arches are narrow. I like it a lot, because you never know what to expect next. Even the locks vary. Most are electrically operated guillotines, but there are handwheel operated ones, normal paddle operate gates, and a barrel gated lock which had the most fearsome flow through the top gate paddles I have ever seen. I'm surprised no-one comes to grief inside it. I was too gobsmacked to remember to take a photo of the maelstrom.

Most of the settlements here are well back from the river, presumably because of the liklihood of flooding. Only Wellingborough is actually built next to the river. We stopped in the park for lunch opposite the huge Whitworth's flour mill before heading out into the wilds again.

Tonight we are at Irthlingborough next to the Rushden and Diamonds football stadium and overlooking a pretty set of lakes typical of this area. There seems to be water, water meadows and water fowl everywhere you look. All the grazing cattle look very contented we were surprised to see so many piebald horses and ponies everywhere. They don't look lke they are suitable for riding, more like new forest poinies or gypsy horses. .

Moored near to us is a boat called Jerusalem, and it is one that we looked at with a view to buying four years ago but found it too small. The owner made us laugh because he was telling us about a mate of his who we had actually met last night at Cogenhoe. We got two versions of the description of the second guy's boat on two spearate occasions, the one glowing and the other derisory. Ah well, I expect it's something in between in reality.