A flying catch-up

I arrived back from Essex on Tuesday morning.  Departing at 6.50am  I had encountered my first rush hour shunt within minutes; the A127 London to Southend Arterial road, here was the first accident and associated backlog of traffic. Now the infamous M25 and the second shunt in the Bell Common tunnel, yet more traffic backlog and last minute lane changing.  Now on the M1 just north of Luton and here was yet another tail ender... and fortunately the last of the journey before exiting the motorway network into lovely Northamptonshire countryside.   I diverted into Braunston to visit thePost Office and General Store for a loaf of bread and a paper then it was off again to see if I could remember the route across country to Bridge 102 where I expected to rendezvous with Caxton.  The grey matter still worked and I found the bridge and the boat with no hassle.
I had brought with me 250kg of brick pavers to act as ballast for the newly lengthened Caxton and these had to be carried from car to boat, a tedious 12 trips.  We did look at using scrap lead because it is non-ferrous and has a very high specific density but sadly it also has a high scrap price at the moment so rather than pay £275 I opted to pay £30 for the pavers. I still think that Caxton needs a little ballast to improve her trim but Joe is not convinced.  That said, she is sitting much better in the water now so a few extra bags of coal should do the trick.