The family and The Lady back at our moorings in Little Paxton
The family and The Lady back at our moorings in Little Paxton

GOBA Hemingford mooring to Paxton aboard The Lady after a walk around Houghton & Wyton and back to my ducks and business

An early breakfast and, after safely stowing the dinghy onto The Lady’s davits, we cruise to Houghton. A lad from Connington works us through for my tip of 50p. He has been walking the 7 mile and serving this function now for three seasons. He enjoys the journey and the work, though he already has a job during the week. We moor the Lady by the lock and take off for a round trip walk of Houghton and Wyton. 

Though a good walk it is spoilt by lack of time and concern to return to the newsagent to collect our picture print by lunch. It is a good sketch of the old Huntingdon Boat House in the form that we knew it before it was demolished from fear of falling down. Another sad passing. Today the owner of the adjacent small cottage, who evidently owns the land, is undertaking some form of extension to this house and the boats are hired from the backwater somewhere closer to Hemingford Abbots. Back with picture safely to The Lady and a steady cruise upstream through the remaining locks to Little Paxton. Only incident was a nice girl in bikini on one of the lock landing stages whose toes needed tickling to best move her. In the end her companion asked her to move. Safely to my mooring and riverside land and much to remove at the end of our journey. Also to take down the chicken wire at slipway’s edge. Our Khaki Campbell chicks, now 3 weeks old, are mature enough to come and go with their older sisters. We have but 11 now the other one of a dozen being lost. Now to finish by reading up to date of papers and prepare for return to work tomorrow. I fear for what I will find and wish I could spend forever in river cruising and walking. The hot day has turned cloudy and the barometer drops.