Heading for Holme

10th July

We'd planned, as I said last night, to split the difference between Newark and Nottingham by stopping at Gunthorpe, but in the event, we've done a bit more than that...

After a lazy start, and a quick paper buying trip to Waitrose, we boated gently up to Town Lock for nine, thinking that that was when its lockie came on duty. Esmeralda followed us up, working on the same assumption. In fact, he doesn't start until nine thirty it seems, so we hung around on the wall opposite the Castle for a bit, then Esmeralda's crew said they'd work the lock themselves.

Naturally, as soon as we'd all moved closer to the lock, the lockie appeared and started working it for us. Come to think of it, the exact same thing happened last time, four years ago.

We then had an uneventful run up a full but not ferocious river, through Hazleford and Gunthorpe locks. The weather was cold enough that I put the central heating on for a bit, thereby ensuring that the sun came out.

By now it was after lunch, and we thought that it would be better all round to carry on and get the big river stuff over with. Accordingly, we left Esmeralda watering at Gunthorpe, and plodded on up river, making around four mph over the ground with the engine turning over at 1300 rpm.

The weather continued to improve, but the river flow got faster as we got higher up, so that it was after half three by the time we were at Holme Lock, just short of Nottingham, and next to the National Watersport Centre.

It takes a while to pen up Holme as it's very deep; the canoe slalom course runs down past it, so a decent fall is needed. Thinking that a) it would be good to stop after over six hours boating and b) that the centre of Nottingham might not be the most peaceful mooring on the system on a Friday night, we've tied above the lock on the visitor moorings there.

We'll carry on up the last short stretch of river to Meadow Lane Lock in the morning, shop at Sainsbury's on our way through, and go on to Sawley for tomorrow night.