Lawrence doing weed hatch and engine checks - it's a tight squeeze
We left our mooring at 8.30 and proceeded all of 50 metres to the water point - where once again, the bane of Lawrence's canal life squirted water all over the place.
Again the locks were stiff and heavy. Yesterday Lawrence helped me lock another boat up before we went down. He wound up one paddle, admittedly an especially stiff one, and he hasn't been near one since. I cannot grouch because some of today's locks were manned by volunteers and on a couple I didn't have anything more arduous to do than hand the bow rope to the lock keeper to put round a bollard and then to hold onto the end.
When you are a single boat in a broad lock you need to rope up, otherwise the boat gets thrown around to much by the force of the water entering or leaving the lock.
Of the 8 locks we did today I only had to do three on my own.
The day started off grey and windy but the sun came out during our last couple of hours on the water and we finished the days sailing mildly sunburnt.
Leaving Shardlow lock behind us. Shardlow has retained a large part of its historic canal side architecture such as the Clock Warehouse in the following photo
After the Derwent Mouth Lock, at 10.50am, we entered the junction of the Trent & Mersey Canal, the Derwent River and the River Trent and this is where we left the Trent & Mersey and entered the River Trent .
Travelling on the river is very different to the canal - Aqua Life kicks up her heels and frolics along at quite a pace, enjoying the deep water under her keel. At just under 1500 revs we were doing over 5mph!
Speeding down the river near Barton in Fabis (at 12.14pm) we passed some more typical landscapes
Barton Island
Approx two hours afer passing Barton Island we were moored up in Knottingham. We moored beside a pretty little park where some camping tents were set up. Lawrence was a little doubtful re who the occupants might be; I just thought a scout group walking the tow path on the bank holiday weekend.
Lawrence sent me off down the tow path to see if there were more vacant moorings. A few hundred metres further on was a line of moored boats with some vacant moorings at the far end. I spoke to the owner of the last boat in the line and he told me it would be much better to moor in front of him under the trees because it was far more salubrious to put up with the birds shitting on your roof than 'that bunch of homeless, drunken Poles in the tents' - a Brexit exit voter I should think.
So I rang Lawrence and he, with difficulty, untied the bow rope due to my unique town mooring technique (which just goes to show it is effective, as I pointed out to him!) and motored down to our present mooring.
We spent the remainder of the afternoon exploring a little of Nottingham. Our mooring is a ten minute walk down the towpath from the town centre from which we wended our way towards the remainder of Nottingham Castle.
Underneath the cliff on which the Castle is built we found what is purportedly the oldest inn in England.
Whether it is or not, it was certainly intriguing as the back rooms of the pub, both on ground level and the floor above are comprised of little rooms carved out of the cliff and linked to each other with narrow and low tunnels.
We were unfortunately too late for the historical museum which closes early on Sunday so we opted for a very late lunch/very early dinner back at The Trip toJerusalem after which we meandered our way back to the canal.
Old houses built into the cliff and the remains of the Castle wall can just be seen on top
Our mooring for the night in Nottingham - unfortunately I didn't see any men in green tights anywhere.
We got back to the boat about 6.30pm and while Lawrence napped I started the blog as this is the first night we have had internet reception since setting out.
14miles 8 locks 6hrs
No comments:
Post a Comment