at 8.00am. Next work out was Sawley Flood lock, normally open, but closed when the river level rises into the 'Amber'. They were closed! Worry wort immediately became anxious; the skipper was doing a Joh - don't you worry about that - amber means proceed with caution. Words hardly likely to soothe the nerves.
By the by the lock woman was right. The lock gates are huge and heavy and some of the paddle gear is nearly impossible to wind. Thank god for Tim and Mike. The next lock after the Sawley flood lock was the Sawley duplicated locks (electric and manned) which let you down onto the River Trent proper. Exiting the huge duplicated locks
And out onto the River Trent with the River Derwent coming in on the left
both looking rather full. Don't you worry about it, says Lawrence!! After awhile we turned southish onto the River Soar which became an altogether more intimate affair
But the level warnings at the following locks were still nudging the amber. (Don't you worry about that). However we did pass some beautiful scenery. Below is an example of a couple of bits of eye candy
we encountered on our journey. We kept pushing on, trying to get up River as far as possible in case conditions deteriorated. We pushed on through Kegworth (shop, restaurants, pubs and other forms of civilisation)
Past Zouch (nice pub), past Normanton on Soar (shops, pub), through Loughborough (museums, a still working bell foundry where 'Great Paul' was cast for St Paul's Cathedral in 1881, good moorings, lots of restaurants etc etc) finally finding an overnight mooring Barrow upon Soar which had a couple of pubs. In all we did 17 miles, 8 locks in 10 hours. I forgot to say on Sunday we did 11 miles, 4 locks in 4 hrs.
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