Can this be classed as walking on water?

This is one end of what, at 160 metres, may be the world's longest mural. It is alongside the Grand Union Canal in Wolverton and was painted in 1986 by Bill Billings, renovated in 2011 by David Fenton  with help from other members of the community.
It is a celebration of the great railway engine, later carriage works, that once provided the economy of this part of England.








Here is the other end



and here what lies between the two as seen from our boat Meadowlark,which transported us through the delights of Milton Keynes.





It isn't our boat really: it belongs to Carol (or Carole with an 'e'), seen here with the reason we were cruising instead of walking - Doreen of the bad knee.











It is quite a small as canal boats go, but ideal for our journey, despite the tentative steps (left) taken at our start in Cosgrove.

But, before we reached the mural there were other sights to see.
For instance, here we are approaching Wolverton Aqueduct, or Iron Trunk as it is known locally, which carries the canal - and us with it - over the River Great Ouse that flows between Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire. If you look over the side this is what you can see, although apart from his umbrella there was no sign of the golfer who may well have been in the rough searching for his ball.

Had he glanced upward, he could have asked the character on the aqueduct if had seen it - assuming the character isn't doing what, from a distance, he seems to be doing!

Looking diagonally to the right from Meadowlark, there is, in the distance, Holy Trinity Church of Old Wolverton which looks like this inside and which stands where  medieval Wolverton once existed - a classic view of the English countryside.

Here in this unusual structure outside part of the derelict railway workshops, you may see in the outstretched hand a reminder of the days of steam railways. Look more closely to discover how the whole body is railway related.

As we move from Wolverton we come to the last of the derelict monuments to the railway in the shape of this sad railway bridge, beneath which we can just glimpse a newer world - the world of Milton Keynes proper, worth leaving for another day's blogging, but near enough for a tantalising view of what is to come.