Into the Middle Level

Friday 3 August

It was a seriously sunny morning, and Graeme and Cathy had to get away early to meet someone in Huntingdon. Fortunately, Daniel had slept well, and so had we all, so it wasn’t too hard to get going first thing.

After the family had gone, we did a further shopping trip in Peterborough, which seems to be one of those places with amazingly hard pavements, or maybe it was just the hot weather.

Back at the boat, we moved onto the service point and pumped out. While we were doing this, the boat which had been using the other half of the service length moved off, and we planned to pull back a bit as soon as we’d pumped out, so as to bring the water filler point within reach of the drinking water hose. Unfortunately, a pair of boats manned by rapscallions appeared, in the shape of Acorn and Festina Lente, and Scooby promptly moored where we needed to be.

Instead of pulling back, we winded Sanity, doing deliberately what we’d done accidentally at Wellingborough. With Sheila on shore holding the bow in, I pushed the stern out into the stream and motored it round so that we were pointing upstream, with bow where the stern had been.

After watering we just pulled back a bit to clear the service length, as there were fishermen on the next length of mooring.

We had lunch and by the time we’d finished, the fishermen had gone. This may or may not have something to do with the fact that we’d left the engine running in order to finish the wash load we’d started whilst watering. In any event, it was now clear to pull out into the river, turn again, and remoor a little further down the embankment, on the end of a line of other boats.

A passing local boater stopped to warn us that the moorings in March were very busy at the moment, so we might like to consider mooring at either Flood’s Ferry or in the Fox Boatyard. We thanked him politely, but were not impressed of his grasp of what we planned to do, so we’ll see what things are like when we get there.

In the earlier shopping trip, I’d gone into a branch of Jessop’s that was having a closing down sale, to see if they had a polarising filter for my camera. Unfortunately, the assistant there wasn’t familiar with my model, although it’s fairly common as I understand it (a Fuji Finepix S6500). Rather than risk buying the wrong thing, I slogged back in this afternoon, taking the camera with me. A different assistant took one look, said “58mm”, and sold me the doings at a 50% discount, thus saving me twenty quid bar a few coppers.

Back at the boat, we collapsed for the remainder of the day, despite the boaters on the bank ahead of us, now including Scooby and Rita, enjoying a merry revel until the late evening.

Saturday 4 August

There was a bit of a change in the weather this morning, cloudy and windy, but still very mild. Having booked Stanground Lock passage for 9.15, we got away from the Embankment at 8.20 and arrived by 8.40, it not being as far as we’d remembered from last year.

We moored on the short landing stage and hung about until 9.10, when I went and found the lockie, filled in the form you have to for passage through the Middle Level, and we were worked through the lock without difficulty. We’d been a bit bothered about the draught at the back of the boat, as officially the depth in the older part of the extended lock is only 27” and we were just over that, but it proved to be fine. This is just as well, as otherwise you have to enter the lock backwards, and wind again on the other side.

The weather got better and better as we went along. We worked down Ashline Lock behind a little cruiser absolutely full of four adults and two kids. They promptly sat on the lower lock landing whilst one of them helped us through, and then insisted on us going off first, even though these little GRP cruisers normally make much better speed through the water than us. In the event, they soon disappeared behind.

Some people are very sniffy about the Middle Level, but we really like it for a couple of days, it’s so different from normal canal or river boating. The channels are mostly wide and straight, with occasional windy and shallow bits, the skies are enormous, and on a fine day like today you just boat on and on down these quiet ribbons of water.

We got to March at 1.45, and had no trouble at all in mooring on the town moorings. I phoned the lockie at Marmont Priory Lock, which we’ll work tomorrow, to let her know we were coming. They like forewarning, as it helps with the constant juggling of water levels that goes on in this system.

The Middle Level, after all, is first and foremost a drainage system for the Fens, and only incidentally provides a connection between the Nene and Great Ouse.

We did a couple of trips to Sainsbury’s, one to shop, and then another to dump recycling, and settled down for a bit of peace and quiet.

It being Saturday, we didn’t get much of this once darkness fell, and there were noises of drunken revelling until the small hours, The bit of mooring we were on felt perfectly secure, however, although the other end of it, next to the road bridge and the steps up to the pub, wouldn’t have been so good.