Author: Cheryl

You can’t moor there

It’s underneath a cocker tree.However I did pick up a few to help ward off the increasing number of spiders taking up residence on Firecrest. Although I don’t think spiders take any notice of this old wives tale. And Eric knows when to humour me….. But going back to the mooring, having spent 3 months on the river, we were still of the mentality that if you saw a mooring place you took it, because the next available one might not be for several miles. And I know that when Eric says this will do, it will.And it wasn’t a problem.  We did check the forecast for wind speeds, and do our own little risk assessment. The big storm itself, wasn’t due to hit us for another few days and despite it being a bit blustery, we didn’t get too many conkers on the roof overnight. And Shardlow is a very pretty place to moor.Almost as good as a howl of Maltesers.

 

Last leg of the river adventure

We said goodbye to our grey and chilly mooring in Beeston and headed under the footbridgethrough the lock and into the sunshineWhere Eric picked me up on the landing post ready to do our last few miles on the Trent.
This young heron stood sentry duty by the weir, I’m sure he’d have waved us off if he could.
We passed familiar landmarks that we’d seen several times back in June, it would have been nice to take a meander up the Erewash again, but we had arranged to meet friends in a few days, and the forecast was warning of imminent storm force winds so we didn’t want to get caught on a temulutuos river, which was already getting choppySawley lock, last of the easy locks, electricly operated with volockies to see us through, it was a bit gloomy down here. But sheltered from the wind,which we could tell was picking up from the flapping flags. We stopped to pick up water at Sawley, before heading under the M1, yes it always makes me smile smugly when I remember I’m no longer living in the fast lane. And finally back onto the Trent and Mersy canal for our first “proper” lock at Derwent Mouth. Those clouds were gathering pace, so although today’s journey hadn’t been a long one. We were ready to call it a day.

We’ve enjoyed our river adventure for this year. I can understand why some narrowboaters are hesitant to venture into deeper waters but we enjoy the change.

 

 

Here be Dragons

We had a lovely few days on Victoria Embankment overlooking, (or should that be underlooking) Trent Bridge, watching the Dragon Boat training. Eric doesn’t like the thought of me sitting at the bow beating a drum, it defeats the idea of a silent electric boat, and besides as all boaters know…. you shouldn’t go fast past moored boats…..But it was time to set off back up the Beeston Canal through Nottingham, admiring the grand warehouse developementsand snapping almost identical photos to those that took on our outward journey. I wonder if the sun always shines on this canalside hub. We never found out how to access it from city side.

 

Lovely Lace in Nottingham

My Aunty Avril is a skilled and knowledgeable Lace Maker so I was keen to explore Nottingham’s lace centre. Unfortunately the Lace Market that Google maps lead me to is a multi story car park. Even the tourist information office was apologetic that Nottingham doesn’t make the most of its creative heritage.However they did direct me to Debbie Bryan’s studio, who was doing her best to compete in a concrete jungle.
She runs a friendly creative retail outlet housed amongst the refurbished lace warehouses. Debbie is an artist who has drawn inspiration from the lace and makes it accessible to all with her quirky shop and tea room. Richard Arkwright established a cotton mill in this area in 1768. It led to an influx of workers needing housing and by the 1840s lace making had changed from a domestic industry to an international export business.What we have left now are the huge and impressive warehouses and factories that dominate this part of Nottingham. The idea being that the more impressive your building, the more desirable your lace was. They’ve been taken over by the trendy who recognise good structure and dollars signs when they see it.I found the current centre of Nottingham spoilt by the concrete and consumerism. And I had to keep reminding myself to look upwards where the cities true beauty lies today. And whilst this might now be a trendy nightclub called the Alchemist, Im not sure its actually one of Boots the Chemists buildings.

Whilst I was looking up, I saw that the Cirque du Soleil were performing in Nottingham, a spectacular I’ve always wanted to see, we got good seats and thoroughly enjoyed the show. We were encouraged to take photos but weren’t allowed to use flash so I didn’t try until they were taking their final bow.

We had a good week in Nottingham, culminating in a few more days in Beeston, where Ruby and our neice Bryony came for a visit and mini cruise.

Touring Britain, but not by boat

The forecast was dodgy so we decided to push on to Nottingham whilst it wasn’t raining, and I’m so glad we did. We we welcomed onto Victoria Embankment with flags, balloons and banners promoting the Tour of Britain. Thankfully not our own slow meander around the country but the high speed cycle tour, which was due to start from West Bridgford the next morning. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but there was a buzz of excitement as I pushed forward through the crowds. I’m not sure of the terminology but being a TV fan of the F1 Grand Prix, it felt like we were doing the grid walk.The car park had been turned into the paddock and the teams were preparing themselves for the race. Coaches and support vehicles all emblazoned with their team sponsors, cyclists, reporters and fans, all milling together, eagerly awaiting the start on the High street. I’d got a route map and knew that they were going over Trent Bridge twice, to do a circuit of central Nottingham and back again, so once the teams left the paddock I walked back towards the river and managed to get a prime position on the corner. Of course not being a true cycling fan I hadn’t anticipated just how quickly the peloton whizzed past.I’m fairly sure these are 2 of our British hero’s, Geraint Continue reading Touring Britain, but not by boat

Safely through Newark, but only just.

After some mindless hooligans spoilt our last visit to Newark we were a little apprehensive.  We delayed our entry into the town to avoid the weekend by using the Muskham Ferry patrons mooring. We anticipated they’d be quite tricky to get onto due to the river flow and the short angled pontoons. The easy solution would have been to go in bow first but you cant use the pub if you cant get off your boat easily, so that would defeat ths object.  Eric’s helmsmanship was well and truly tested, they don’t do reversing around a corner whilst going upstream in boat school. Thank goodness we’d chosen to arrive in the morning before the gongoozelers were watching, it took 2 attempts but we made it.  I made sure he was well rewarded and we fulfilled our “patrons duty” with several pints and a good sunday lunch.And before the anticipated weather change, I got to finish the shawl I was knitting and took advantage of the sunshine to wash and dry it flat on the roof.

Well replenished we set off to for the last few miles into Newark.

We steamed ahead towards the castle and in our excitement forgot to read the map, I mean what could be so hard to navigate, under the bridge and moor up on the right….Oops, when you have an 8 foot radio mast, it pays to to go through the middle arch with enough headroom. Luckily I don’t think the damage to the bridge was severe enough to stop the traffic. And it really was only the tip of the ariel that scuffed the already flakey brickwork.  Much relieved we moored up at Farndon and I went for a walk. One of the last remaining working  willow holts a is just off the mooring. Both a fascinating site for the number of varieties of willow trees, a haven for wildlife. This Comma Butterfly obliged me by posing for a photo.

Cromwell

Something was warning us to make the most of this early September sunshine, (which I was very glad about, as we’ve now experienced storm Ali and storm Bronagh) It’s worth being on the river just to enjoy this perfect mooring. We woke to mist rising off the water.And a perfect sunrise.So we set to, and did the chores, I did the washing and Eric the polishing.I got my spinning wheel out onto the pontoonand worked a bit of magic to create a gorgeous hank of yarn. We also found ourselves a tree full of damsonsand made several jars of damson blackberry and elderberry jelly. What’s not to love about this life we’re leading. We really don’t want summer to end.

Upstream, from Lincoln to Cromwell

When we travelled down the Trent, we were advised to book our return passage several days in advance so we could plan our journey to optimise the incoming tide, which we did. So as suggested We arrived at Torksey in the afternoon and locked through to the top side mooring pontoon.Someone’s got a sense of humour because the lock gates here are adorned with teapots. By evening a little flotilla had assembled, we all prepped our boats, checked the anchors and cleared the props, in readiness for the tide arriving at 9:45 the next morning. We were travelling with a small cruiser who would nip ahead quickly, a narrowboat with a “proper” engine, who didn’t believe we would have enough umph to make it, and a lovely single handed narrowboater, who had engine cooling issues, so was happy to have some company. In theory we should have been carried upstream by the tide which is stronger than the flow downstream, although we saw the water level drop turn and start to rise on the pontoon, we can’t say we actually felt like we were surfing. What we didn’t want to happen was for our journey to take longer than the tide because that would have meant we would be pushing against both the downstream flow and the retreating tide.It’s quite exhilarating going up the big wide river. We wouldn’t want to do it every day, but it makes a fun change.And I got to sit on the roof doing my knitting, safe in the knowledge that I wasn’t going to be decapitated by any low bridges. We were overtaken by 2 big cruisers who left Torksey after us, but as Cromwell lock can only open when the tide is right we all had to wait and go through at the same time. I think there were 7 boats in the lock this time. Firecrest had done us proud and we’re confident we will cope with stronger tidal flow in the future.And the cheery lockie waved us all through,

One of the things we have enjoyed over the past few months is the number of shore power electric points there have been along the river. Newark, Cromwell, Lincoln, Bardney and Boston. It’s meant that we’ve hardly had to run the generator at all, a real treat. Whilst the generator itself is reasonably quiet, the woodwork around it vibrates noisily and it’s hot, an advantage in the winter but not in the summer

Eric’s taken the opportunity to do some tinkering with the batteries, rebalancing them to enhance efficiency and longevity. We were very pleased when we cruised all the way from Lincoln to Cromwell which is about 30 miles and upstream on the tidal Trent. We took 3 days to complete this journey. It might not sound all that wonderful compared to some electric vehicles but we were pretty impressed that Firecrest coped so well on the power hungry river and we’re fairly sure we could have done the additional 5 miles onto Newark if we’d wanted to push on. But Cromwell is a lovely lock with more of those prized electric hook ups. The sun had come out and there were plenty of Blackberry bushes that needed my attention so we broke the journey to make jam.

Angel Wing

Have you heard of “Angel Wing” ? Maybe not, but have you ever seen a duck goose or swan with a grossly deformed wing.I had always assumed birds like this had been attacked and injured, and in many ways they have. But not by another wild animal. Angel Wing is a malformation that causes one of the wing joints to grow twisted outwards instead of lying flat against the birds back. It is caused by poor diet, namely a diet too high in carbohydrates, ie Bread, the bread that we love to feed to the ducks. So I guess it’s a bird equivalent to rickets. Ducks and swans are susceptible though geese are the worst affected and as you’d expect, it’s most common in parks and accessible beauty spots where families tend to go to “feed the ducks.”It’s a tough one to combat because it’s hard to resist feeding the ‘ducks’ when they appeal so much. I’m not entirely sure but I think these geese might have a mild  case but I’m not an expert. CRT suggest you use porridge oats or veg like peas and sweet corn or buy a floating wildfowl food which is what I keep on the boat.These swans certainly enjoy it. Although they still like to search the bottom for the real treats.

There isn’t a cure for Angel Wing. It prevents the birds from flying which makes them more vulnerable to preditors or bad weather. So please, take heed of the notices not to feed bread to the ducks, this is what it does to them.