Farewell to Boston

Tuesday 27th August 2019 in Kirkstead.
We decided to make an early start as it was clearly going to be another very hot day. Reluctantly, we left our mooring; we have really enjoyed Boston and were sad to leave.

Our mooring was a quarter of a mile from the Great Sluice, so we gently sailed right down to the end and turned just in front of the Great Sluice.

St Botolph's looked rather misty and mysterious in the early morning light as we started back off to the west up the River Witham.

Rush hour across Langrick bridge where there is a bend (!) after a two mile straight stretch and just before another five mile straight. Tractors outnumber cars around these parts....

The guide books spoke of an unusual signpost at Dogdyke that pointed to "Boston" in one direction and "New York" in the other. We moored up briefly but all we found was the street name - it seems probable that the road sign now resides in someone's house or garden!

We discovered that we were only a few hundred yards from RAF Coningsby and the BBMF. That is it in the distance.

If we had known how close it was to the river, we could have visited it from here instead of riding the bus from Lincoln for an hour!
Eurofighter Typhoons are based at Coningsby and we saw plenty of them overhead as we sailed up the river. "Jammy toerags" was M's remark!

Our goal for today was Kirkstead Bridge, next to Woodhall Spa. The moorings there were full but the kind chap on nb "Nauti-Lass" suggested that we breast up against him as he was leaving shortly. When he did, we were able to moor up in his space.

We walked into Woodhall Spa to try to find some ice creams and observed what we took to be the rush hour. How different from Surrey!

The boat behind us had the most amazing collection of rubber ducks on the roof, all arranged in order of height. Is this what is meant by having one's ducks in a row?

We especially liked the Royal HM Queen Duck!

The evening was still very hot and sultry, and about 7pm a group of kids, who were camping locally, came down for a swim in the river. There was a lot of weed around the pontoon, so we suggested that they should jump off the back of MM to avoid the weed. They clearly had great fun splashing about and cooling off. M asked them if that was a "Ninja" turtle - they were a great bunch of kids.

Later in the evening, we were treated to a lovely sunset that then changed into a massive thunderstorm which raged all around us but seemed to miss us entirely. At one point the lightning was almost continuous to our south, lighting up the sky like it was day.

Today: 15 miles, 0 locks and 4.1 hours.
Trip: 312 miles, 134 locks and 162.4 hours.