Saturday 2nd to Monday 4th July, 2016 at Willington.
Early on Saturday morning, M caught the train from Beeston to go home for a few days. Overnight the River Trent had gone down - last night the indicator was almost in the red ("do not proceed") but this morning it was well down in the orange ("caution"). As R got back to MM, another boat was going into the lock to go out on the river, so R followed them.
The trip up river was uneventful and took just 85 minutes - compared to the 45 minutes it took to go down river two days ago. There were two more river sections before MM finally arrived at the entrance to the Trent & Mersey Canal.
Getting into the canal mouth was tricky as the River Trent flows in from the left, the River Derwent flows in from the right and the wind was blowing hard from the side. A challenge!
On Saturday night, R moored up in Shardlow, which used to be a busy "inland port".
Happily, most of the old warehouses survived and have now been converted for modern uses. One is a Canal Heritage centre.
The centre was full of old photographs of Shardlow as it used to be. It also had a replica "back cabin" complete with a rather too glamorous boat woman!
On Sunday morning, the old Clock Warehouse, now a pub, was the site for a national steam boat rally with half a dozen beautiful steam launches.
On Monday night, R moored up at Stenson Lock, which was being manned by C&RT volunteers - a welcome sight as the lock is quite deep at 12ft 4in. Even better, there was a very good coffee shop next the the lock and a small farm shop behind.
On Tuesday morning, R moved on to Willington to pick up M from the train. He secretly enjoyed his few days on his own (says M!).
Three Days: 16 miles, 9 locks and 10.6 hours.
Trip: 170 miles, 107 locks and 127.2 hours.
No comments:
Post a Comment