Tag: River Soar

Soaring into Leicestershire

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.

Dewent Mouth Lock in the red

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,

Where the Derwent River and the Trent cross paths


Throught the Sawley cut, waving to the Erewash canal and turning off before Nottingham’s cranfleet cut.

Make your mind up time, which way shall we go…


And onto the River Soar.

Turning right onto the Soar, cruising up stream, does that look a bit autumnal to you, have we missed summer?


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.

Always ready to help

We were making good progress so didn’t stay long,  We wanted to moor up at Birstall,

Words fail me, not my idea of fun at all.

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.

That looks fun

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,

That doesn’t look good

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

Soaring along the Soar

Lots of lovely cruising along this final part of the journey before we joined the Trent.

Early morning at Birstall

We cruised straight through Loughborough, but came across some pretty villages

Normanton on Soar

With gongoozelers

Alpacas at Barrow upon Soar

I had quite a lot of hard work to do

Cheryl closing the gate

But we were rewarded with some lovely mooring

Barrow boats visitor mooring

There’s some impressive houses, we wondered which country we were in at one point, this developement even had it’s own private marina

And some very impressive bridges. This is Mountsorrel mineral railway bridge. It’s a grade II listed building and as it helpfully tells us it was built in 1860

Mountsorrell bridge

The nearer we got to the Trent, the more dire the warnings became about the potential for the river to flood. These wooden railings are the final emergency mooring facility before the Trent. And surveying the low lying ground around I hope that bungalow is built on stilts. I can’t imagine how terrifying it would be if we needed to use such a facility, but I know how grateful I’d be if I did.

Emergency moorings on the Soar

Our final night on the Soar was at Sutton Bonnington tucked in the bend known as the Devil’s Elbow

The mooring on the Devils Elbow

Our final morning on the Soar saw us cruising past the coal fuelled Ratcliffe power station. It’s been churning out electricity for 50 years, but it’s days are numbered.

Radcliffe power station

We saw these cooling towers last year when we looked south from the mouth of the Erewash canal.

Radcliffe power station


Leaving Leicester

I get the impression there’s a lot more still to do and see in Leicester, but Castle Gardens is a 2 day pontoon. We moved up to the 14 day Friar’s Mill pontoon, all of 5 minutes cruise and still within walking distance of the centre, but it is in the midst of redevelopment and noisy. We were excited to see electric hook up, but nothing seemed to be working.

Friar’s Mill mooring

We didn’t stay long and continued past Frog Island, and if judging by the size of the frog on this mural probably safer not to.

Frog Island mural

Frog Island is actually a suburb of Leicester and houses some of the Victorian mills and factories and has some fascinating history.

Sadly the canal and river is still full of rubbish that accumulates on the bends and around locks.

But looking beyond, the countryside was lovely. It’s a flat landscape with many lakes that have been developed into nature reserves, Watermead Park. I don’t know if any of the lakes are manmade left over from mining or gravel extraction, but we could imagine navigation being impossible in flood season.

We moored up for the night at Birstall, a nice village with all the facilities a boater needs, pub, co-op, and takeaway.

Birstall Mooring