Blisworth Tunnel

Stoke Bruerne to Nether Heyford, 7 miles, 0 locks, 1 tunnel

I'd expected to get all of my business in Stoke Bruerne finished yesterday, leaving this morning to tackle the Blisworth tunnel and then off to Norton Junction, where the Leicester arm of the Grand Union starts; but due to yesterdays drunken shenanegans, I'm visiting the Waterways Museum today.

The museum turns out to be very good, with lots of interesting stuff that is nicely presented and explained. There's also lots of stuff for kids to do, including colouring in and dressing up, and with a special activity book that gives them things to look out for. It's housed in a 200 year old warehouse, which lends a period feel to the place, and it's over two floors. There's also--if you ask nicely--a boatman's cabin from a working boat that you can see. The £4.75 admission price includes use of a free audioguide and while I usually find these useful and informative, this one does something unique, leading you out of the museum and off down the towpath in both directions.

One of the places that the audioguide takes you to is Blisworth tunnel. This has been worrying me since I arrived at Stoke Bruerne; worrying in a sick-to-the-pit-of-my-stomach kind of a way, since I can't go any further north without going through it. It's 3,057 yards long (or if you prefer, 1.73 miles/2.8km) and I've never done a tunnel that long before. Also, as none of Oothoon's tunnel lights were working after the end of the Aylesbury arm, I couldn't go through anyway. I managed to fix one of the lights (loose connection) but the other one has a dead bulb. Still, one is all I need. I'll have all the cabin lights on anyway, since one thing I do know about tunnel walls is that they're easier to avoid if you can see them.

Having had a nice time wandering around the museum and having inspected the tunnel entrance (and had a look along it), I set off just before 4pm, in order to avoid the trip boat that goes into the tunnel a few hundred yards, then reverses out again! The tunnel looks rather unimposing and serene, sitting at the bottom of a hill as though it was the most natural thing in the world, and once you're in it's spacious (that's because there's room for two boats to pass) and you can't see the other end for the tunnel lights of the boats coming in the opposite direction. Another thing you can't see, not until you're underneath them and water is pouring on top of you, is the ventilation shafts. There are nineteen of these and it seems like all of the water collected from the hill above runs down them. Fortunately I had my hat and coat on, because another thing I know about tunnels is that they're always leaky.

Although I know that the tunnel is wide enough for two narrowboats to pass, it's quite another thing when you meet one. I was keeping well over to the right and the first boat slipped past with nary a bump, but the second boat was clearly nervous and almost came at me broadside on, straightening up only at the last moment. We bumped and clattered past each other, rebounding off our hulls and the tunnel walls. Fortunately the other boats I passed seemed better behaved, which was good, because I passed a total of six boats in the tunnel.

After the last of them I could see the tunnel mouth clearly, and although the sign on the wall told me that it was still father away than the entire length of the Islington tunnel, it made me feel like it was all nearly over. Until, that is, I looked behind. I hadn't really expected to see anything, since the tunnel was probably still full of boats going the other way, but I was quite surprised to see a little red light, like an LED, in midair some distance away. I assumed that it must be the navigation light from one of the retreating boats, but when I looked back a little later, it seemed to have got closer. What could it be? Surely it couldn't be another boat that had come though without a tunnel light--that would be crazy. But by then I was obsessed. Every few seconds I'd turn around to check that I wasn't imagining it, and to see where it was. It really did look like it was starting to get very close and at that point I panicked and put the throttle on full. If it was another boat with no light, I didn't want it hitting me; if it wasn't, I didn't want to be anywhere near it whatever it was. Of course what I didn't tell you was that the audioguide described how several men had died in the construction of the tunnel and how it was supposed to be haunted. I might be sceptical about that kind of thing, but I didn't want to be proven wrong either! It seemed to take an age to get to the end of the tunnel, all the time the red light kept getting closer and closer, until I got within about 200m of the end, after which the light seemed to slow down and stop. Even as I emerged from the tunnel into daylight, I could still look back into the tunnel and see it shining there. I have no idea what it was, but I was completely freaked out about it. After a moment or two of me looking back at it in the tunnel, it vanished, and I hit the throttle and ran!

Once you're out of the tunnel, it's all rather rural and pretty. Blisworth itself seems like a sleepy country town and it's not long before you're at Gayton Junction, where the Northampton arm takes the canal off to join the River Nene through Peterborough and eventually to the Wash on the east coast. Lovely though the idea of going to the seaside on my boat is, I'll save it for another time and I proceeded along the main body of the canal towards Norton Junction and the Leicester arm.

My plans, as I've said, had called for me to travel through the tunnel this morning and reach Norton Junction by this evening, but it wasn't to be. I decided to stop at Bugbrooke, which sounded promising, but as is often the way, you're on it before you realise, there's no where to stop because none of the moored boats have left a space large enough, and then you go under a bridge and the towpath edge is uneven and convered with weeds and nettles, rather than convenient metal piling. Since Bugbrooke clearly couldn't accomodate, I continued to Nether Heyford, which is the next village. It's not really near the canal and other than a few moored boats there's nothing here, but it's quiet and it was easy to park, and that was more important frankly.