Visits and boating in the sun

13th & 14th June

Yesterday was, as hoped, mainly taken up by a visit from the junior branch of the family, in the shape of Cathy, Graeme, Daniel and Alexander. They turned up mid morning, and stayed with us for lunch and well into the afternoon. It was great to see them all, and both grandkids are clearly thriving.

As you'd expect, Graeme and Cathy spend a lot of time worrying about whether they are getting it right, and all we can do is try to reassure them that they are doing a splendid job. I guess almost all parents go through the same thing – by the time you've got the hang of it, the kids are old enough to tell you where you went wrong, a phenomenon known as adolescence.

The weather continues to be flaming June at its best, which is particularly enjoyable on these waters.

Other stuff about Saxilby:

I think I commented last time on the popularity of the local chippy. During the afternoon, one of Cathy's friends who lives in the village came over with her two offspring of much the same age as Dan and Alex. In her opinion, the chippy isn't in fact that wonderful, it's just the only one between Gainsborough and Lincoln. We didn't sample it, so I pass on the info uncorroborated.

The mooring we chose alongside the picnic area, turns out to be used as an open air pub by the local twenty somethings. Most of the time, this wasn't a problem, but as the drinking, shouting and occasional fighting went on until midnight, it did get a bit tedious.

Half way through the evening, another broad, tall cruiser turned up. It was unusual in that it had a flaming barbeque on its bow deck, and I'm not being antipodean in my use of language here.

They tied in front of us, and at one stage we were concerned that the flames were going to set fire to the willow tree overhanging the mooring, but all seemed to be well. We never actually saw anyone cook on the thing – perhaps they were just using it as a primitive navigation light.

This morning, I popped to the shop to get a paper, and on my return, tidied up the picnic site. It wasn't as bad as might have been feared from the amount of booze consumed during the six hours or so the party was in progress, but it still made sense to clear it up. Scruffy areas tend to get scruffier, whilst tidy ones encourage folk to leave them like that, so it seemed a worthwhile exercise to us.

We then set off on another glorious day to boat through to Lincoln and beyond. The water point in Saxilby was being used by two large wide beams, so we went on and used the services block on the approach to the city. It's just beyond the long length of permanent moorings, and has all services except recycling.

As before, we noted that the best moorings for shopping in Lincoln are on the Witham. If you go through the Glory Hole and under the modern sculpture "Empowerment", there a lot of rings on the wall between there and Stamp End Sluice. Tying here would be far better than trying to use Brayford Pool, which sadly continues to look rather scruffy, run down and frankly unsafe.

Stamp End Lock was its usual awkward self. It has one of the slowest opening guillotine gates on the system at the top, and this time we had the complication that as the lock started to fill, it became apparent that the bottom gates weren't going to close properly as there was a chunk of tree between them.

Giving the gates a shove only succeeded in bringing on the "Bottom gates open" light in the control box, which meant that it wouldn't let us close the guillotine. We had to draw the bottom paddles, and then shove the gates open despite the flow of water coming through from the slightly raised top gate, so that the wood eventually floated free.

Then we could shut them and fill the lock at the snail's pace the automated system allows. By the time we'd got through and closed up again, we'd spent half an hour at the place, amidst a smell of sewage and the large dead fish in the lock.

But that was the only downer in the whole day. We stopped on the pontoon at Washingborough for lunch, then carried on through Bardney Lock to Bardney Bridge pontoon for the night.

It's very peaceful here, despite the traffic over the bridge just downstream of us, and we're looking forward to a quiet night.