Friday, December 12, 2008

The Long and Winding (Road) River..

We had an enjoyable afternoon yesterday, Dad and Ann came over to see us, and bring some bits and pieces that I’d bought and had sent to their home.

So yesterday evening I set about installing 2x1Gb memory modules in my laptop. One turned out to be faulty, so it’s got to go back.
Then it was time to play with the PDA I’d bought on ebay. Got everything I wanted installed, but Sue had to help me this afternoon to get the GPS bit configured. No excuse for getting lost now!

Another cold, frosty night gave way to a grey, murky morning, with damp in the air. Showers before we set off at 09:00 made hard surfaces slippery, requiring careful footwork on locksides. But as the temperature rose the ice thawed, making it much safer. In fact, the day wasn’t too bad at all. Grey all day, with odd spits of rain, but fairly mild.

and they were true to it’s name. Each lock we came had either gate paddles or gates left open, orWe set off about ½ an hour after a hire boat heading back to Redhill. The boat was Lazydayz, even both. We passed them at Zouch, so at least got past that irritation.

Convoy into Barrow Deep Lock
The broad reach after Barrow upon Soar

Normanton on Soar Church
Seagulls or Treegulls??
A long way down in Kegworth Deep Lock

Redhill Marina, site of next year’s IWA National Festival.
Down the remainder of the Soar and out onto the Trent, the change in direction of the river flow was immediately apparent. Pushing against the flow is a lot harder than going with it!

Going against the flow

Up Sawley Lock, the easy push button operation being welcome after handling the heavy gates of the Soar's broad locks, and then along Sawley cut to moor opposite the marina entrance.

Out of Sawley Locks. Note the traffic light, indicating that it’s safe to use the locks.
This has been the longest day either of the boats has done for quite a while, but we can sit back and relax now, and hope that BW get Derwent Mouth Lock finished as planned for re-opening on Monday.

We wanted to get here, off the rivers, because the weather is turning wet over the weekend and we didn’t relish being stuck with the water rising.

Locks 10, miles 15½

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