And off again!

9th & 10th June

The evening before last, after we'd had dinner and were trying to relax despite the frustration and uncertainty of not knowing what we were going to do the next day, a Sileby Mill hire boat appeared going down the lock. We went and gave them a hand, and explained about the Trent being closed. We had a good old natter, then retreated back to Sanity.

It was pretty rough night, worrying about how long we were going to be stuck. In the morning, we got up early and paced about rather, then suddenly, at half eight, another boat turned up. When I went to talk to them, they explained that they'd been waiting above the lock, and lo and behold, the light had just turned green.

Off we went again, down the last of the Soar, left turn up the Trent away from the weir, then hard right round into the Cranfleet Cut. We had a good run down the river from Cranfleet to Beeston, touching 7.5 mph at times. The river was certainly still quite high.

There was plenty of space at Nottingham by Sainsbury's, so we had a good old restock. The great thing about this location is that the trolleys don't have locks on the wheels, just a pound in the slot system, so you can wheel it right up to the boat.

I spent the late afternoon doing an engine service – 6800 hours now – just like a fair number of other boating bloggers.

Speaking of blogging and numbers, I've just clocked up 40,000 hits between the website and the two blogs. Not a patch on some others around here, of course, but still satisfying to think of.

The way I had the comments option set on this blog seems to give problems on occasions; there's been times I couldn't comment on my own blog. It was set to give an embedded dialogue box on the post's webpage, but I've changed it to a standalone comment entry page, which seems to work better.

We had a much better night's sleep last night. After a another visit to Sainsbury's, we set off for the big river. Meadow Lane Lock is under refurbishment at the moment, and a sign at Beeston had said that it would be available for use between 10 and 11.

We got there at nine, and with difficulty found a mooring outside a work barge and settled down to wait. Shortly after making coffee, two boats worked up the lock. Huh?

Seemingly, the lock is available all the time, it's just the towpath that's out of bounds. By this time Eventide had arrived, so we worked down together and set off for Holme Lock.

We had to hang around there a bit, as there was a trip boat due to come down, and the lockie wanted to put them through at the front. Finally they turned up, and we all penned down and charged out onto the huge width of the Trent.

Although full, it wasn't in fact flowing particularly quickly, so it made for very pleasant boating. We lunched on the move, and apart from a run in with another trip boat, Sonning, reached Newark quite uneventfully.

(Note to the skipper of Sonning: before turning across the river under the bows of the boat coming downstream at you, it's really helpful if you give a sound signal, or even try calling him on the radio. He might not know that you usually turn around just at that point. Aargh!!)

Newark was quite busy at three o'clock, with no space left on the pontoon by the BW offices. We'd just resigned ourselves to mooring on the wall on the other side, and (though I say it myself) I'd done a neat reverse ferry glide over there, when we realised that one of the boats on the pontoon was our old friend Agapé, last seen at Thurmaston.

So I tried another ferry glide across to them, but it really doesn't work going downstream. Never mind, we got there and tied outside them. They are not on the boat at the moment, so we're sitting here with our ears cocked, ready to check that they don't mind us being here.