Friday July 1st, 2016 at Beeston Lock.
July already? It sort of crept up on us!
An early awakening of the unplanned variety. Lots of voices on the towpath woke us at 4:20. We thought at first that it was a crowd of revellers returning after a night out - but they didn't sound like revellers. Just after 5:30 we discovered the reason. The pounding of many feet along the towpath indicated that they were particpating in the "Nottingham 5:30 Walk/Run". As its title suggests, it is a 5.30km non-competitive walk/run starting at 5:30am. This lot ran past MM at 5.40am.....
Other than that, it was a very quiet mooring!
After breakfast, we moved MM a short way up the towpath and moored her up outside the biggest branch of Sainsbury's that we have ever seen. Wine stocks on board were getting low and we have found Sainsbury's to be very good for offering quality wine at reasonable prices. We were not disappointed....
With great amusement, we watched a pair of coot parents feeding their young. As with moorhens, if you give food to the parents they carry it back to the youngsters and feed them (unlike greedy ducks!).
The little chicks are definitely the punk rockers of the waterfowl world!
Not sure if even a punk rocker would go for that hairstyle.
We set off back in the direction we had come yesterday - that is, towards Beeston. It was dry but very windy.
At Beeston Lock, the canal "cut" finishes and, through the lock, you are back on the River Trent.
The warning notice was in the amber - if you look closely there is just about 4 inches of amber below the red!
We waited for a couple of hours while we had lunch but, if anything, the water was higher - so we decided to moor up and stay here for the night and try again tomorrow.
While we were sitting quietly with a cup of tea, there was a sudden loud and unexpected roar from the elecrical cupboard. Had something exploded? R gingerly opened the cupboard, only to find that one of our "automatic" lifejackets had inflated itself in its bag. Weird! R had to cut it out of the packaging (with some difficulty as it was still trying to inflate) but it is no longer usable and we will have to get another in due course.
More rain arrived about teatime, so it was a good thing that we decided to stay put tonight.
Tomorrow morning, M has to go home for a few days but there is a station at Beeston only a few hundred yards away and it is on the same line as the train that she was planning to take from Long Eaton. She will catch the same train just 9 minutes earlier.
Today: 3 miles, 0 locks and 3.0 hours.
Trip: 168 miles, 103 locks and 123.7 hours.
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