Up to Fiskerton and down to Kirkstead

25th & 26th June

It was a lazy start yesterday, as we only planned to go to Fiskerton Fen. We had the usual fun at Bardney Lock with its top gates leaking furiously (though we've since found the answer; see below).

At Fiskerton, we found a couple of other boats already there, and indeed there's been rather more traffic on the river in the last couple of days.

A visit to the hide showed that things hadn't changed much on the lake, the only additional bird being a solitary lapwing mooching about. We couldn't stay long in the hide, as a barn swallow had built its nest in the eaves, and was reluctant to come in and feed its young whilst we were there.

Outside, there was a goodly number of LBJs (little brown jobs) but none of them would stay still long enough to be identified.

Back at the pontoon, we were joined by Copper Dragon from Skipton, and its steerer, Big Alf, readily admitted to knowing our friends Roger and Margaret Millin. Indeed, he described taking them to a folk club, so an unusual man in more than one way ;-}}

We'd visited the butcher at Bardney before setting off, so were able to have a chicken leek and sweet corn pie with salad for tea.

These pies are like supermarket pies in the way the wedding vow of an eighteen year old bride standing in front of the altar next to her one true love is like a politician's campaign promise.

(I've been reading Raymond Chandler.)

Today we had another relaxed start on another fine day. Sheila winded Sanity just upstream of the mooring pontoon with little difficulty (though 70' would be trickier), and we pottered back down to Bardney. A friendly boater gave us a hand with the lock, which was much appreciated. It was full, so he opened a gate for us, and then, once Sanity was dropping in the lock, told Sheila that he'd close up for her, thus avoiding the hassle of re-boarding the boat from the high walls below the lock.

It started leaking furiously through the top gates again, whereupon he walked back up to them and flung himself at the balance beam. The gates promptly clicked together and the leak stopped. Another useful lesson learnt.

We'd planned to stop at Southrey, but when we got there, the short pontoon was filled by a narrow boat and a wide boat. Sheila asked the steerer of the narrowboat if we could tie alongside, and he readily agreed.

He described himself as Mad Fred Reed, and for the hour we were there, never stopped talking about his exploits crossing tidal waters in his boat, his legal tussles with BW and the BBC, and the fact that he was disabled by virtue of only having 30% lung capacity.

After giving him a cup of coffee, we frankly couldn't face any more, and decided to go on to Kirkstead Bridge. On the way down, since lunchtime beckoned, we revved up to 1600 rpm for a while, and did 6.3 mph. The engine started to run a tad warm on this, a problem we found on another hot summer on the Great Ouse. It's when the river water is warmed up, it doesn't cool the skin tank quite so well.

Doing the washing up (so as to use some hot water from the calorifier) and easing the throttle back to 1200 allowed things to cool down again.

Here the pontoon was quite busy, but we got in with no trouble: it's filled up since. We've had a walk into Woodhall Spa for shopping, a chat with some folk on a cruiser we met here last time, and are looking forward to a quiet evening.

Tomorrow we'll go on to Tattershall for another rendezvous with the kids.