So much for my good intentions suggesting we take the Leicestershire route, down the River Soar. I’d checked all the relevant websites and confirmed that the Soar was no longer in flood, but I had forgotten to check that short stretch of the River Trent between Derwent Mouth lock and Sawley marina, and yes you’ve guessed , we were still hovering on red and the flood gates were closed.
Luckily it only held us up by 2 days, and our friend Jo popped in to say hello whilst we were twiddling our thumbs. Jo has recently discovered the joys of drumming and took me to her group that meets in Nottingham.
And I’m happy to agree that it was a great way to spend an evening. But when the sun rose the next morning and CRT gave us the go-ahead we weren’t hanging around, we were off, hurtling through the swirly currents at a heady 6 mph, under the M1,
Throught the Sawley cut, waving to the Erewash canal and turning off before Nottingham’s cranfleet cut.
And onto the River Soar.
We quite enjoy river cruising, its usually wide and has a sense of greater freedom, although we were glad to be off the strong currents.
We made it through to Loughborough, and who should we meet but Jo and her trusty windlass to help us through a lock.
We were making good progress so didn’t stay long, We wanted to moor up at Birstall,
This is where Jo had moored in December, and why we don’t cruise rivers in the winter. But as she says, she had a whale of a time and lived to tell the tale. In the mean time we took advantage of that nice solid edge and the sunshine to do some spring cleaning.
Just in time to welcome another visitor, my friend Carol from back in the day when we were student nurses together
Having had an enjoyable day we got ready to cruise into Leicester but guess what Birstall Lock had problems,
It had been knocked off its hinges and although CRT said it was still operable with care, it took ages to empty and we had to enlist the help of 4 burly young men to help us open the gate to let us in. It didn’t take long to fill and we got through safely but not surprisingly the next day CRT changed its advise and closed it for a week until it was repaired.
But we’d made it to Leicester and within walking distance to the train station cause I was jumping ship for my next adventure