Up the Non-Tidal Trent to Nottingham.

Sunday 8th September 2019 in Nottingham.
A pretty sunrise heralded our departure from Newark.

Knowing that today would be a long day and that our favourite breakfasting places would not open until 10:00am on a Sunday, we made an early start.
Looking back, we saw that a large cruiser had slipped in behind us since M had taken the sunrise photograph - and we never heard it arrive!

Town Lock was empty and ready for us, and manned by a cheerful volunteer, who saw us through.

All along the Trent, there is a marker on the bank every kilometre. Zero is next to Meadow Lane Lock at Nottingham so we knew that, from here, we had 37km (23 miles) to go today to get to Nottingham and off the River Trent.

Staythorpe gas fired power station next to the river is huge. The colours of the water and the sky were positively tropical!

The little figure of the fisherman made a striking silhouette against the huge river. We could tell that it was Sunday because there were literally hundreds of fishermen on the banks.

A pretty reflection of the bank in the water, disturbed by our wash. We are used to travelling slowly on the canals, but on the river MM was able to average four miles an hour, even against the current.

The last of four massive locks on this part of the Trent was Holme Lock. All of them are manned and deep. This one is 12ft deep and having shut the gates behind us, the lock keeper opened them again for a cruiser coming up behind us. It took an age to fill with water.

At last we arrived at Meadow Lane Lock on the outskirts of Nottingham, with the Nottingham Forest football ground in the background. Behind that (out of view) is the Trent Bridge cricket ground.

And just next to the lock is the Notts County football stadium. All this to delight sports fans in such a small area!

Nottingham City centre is another mile or so along the Beeston Canal and we moored up in the same place where we moored at the end of July coming the other way and were treated to a lovely sunset.

Today: 24 miles, 6 locks and 8.2 hours.
Trip: 383 miles, 145 locks and 185.6 hours.

Happy Birthday and a Trip Home.

Thursday 5th to Saturday 7th September 2019 in Newark.
This really is a lovely mooring! The sunrise through the arches of the town bridge made a good start to the day.

Thursday was R's birthday so we had a relaxing day. The day started with "hunt the gift" as M had hidden R's present in a "safe place" and couldn't for the life of her remember where it was! Happily, there are only so many hiding places in a narrowboat, so the present was soon found (among M's undies!). Small, but beautiful - it is a sound chip and tiny speaker that R can fit into one of the small Terrier locomotives on the Hayling layout so that it will provide all the sound effects. We've heard it in operation and it's astonishingly realistic.

The speaker, that also has to fit inside the engine, is tiny!

We continued with breakfast at Waitrose and followed that by a gentle wander around this lovely town, including another look in at the castle.

In the early afternoon, we treated ourselves to a proper afternoon tea in the Old Bakery Tea Rooms.

The tea was impressive and we managed to finish all but one small piece. We were stuffed at the end!

Almost as lovely as the sunrise was the evening light on the castle opposite our moorings with the moon in a clear blue sky.

On Friday, M needed to go home for a night. We had found that there is a fascinating café in the old railway station building and they open at 6:30 - so, we went there for very early breakfast before M left on the 9.07 train. It is an interesting building and the interior has been imaginatively recreated. The food was good too!

R spent the rest of the day finding a DIY shop to get some bits for MM and then doing some work for Capture. At home, M found that a new book on the Hayling Island Railway had arrived for R. Yes, the teacosy wanted to read it too....

On Saturday, R spent the morning working on some train bits and then did some more Capture work before going back to the café in the station to await M's return.
In the evening, we went to have a celebratory meal in the local Pizza Express. Very unusually, the building has a round tower at one end.

Unfortunately all the tables in the upper floor were full, but we had a lovely table on the ground floor overlooking the river.

The manager was very kind and, when he heard that it was R's birthday, he gave us each a complimentary glass of Prosecco. A great evening and a lovely birthday!

Up the Tidal Trent.

Wednesday 4th September 2019 in Newark.
R had checked the tide times with the lock-keeper at Torksey lock and had been told that the best time to leave there would be 11:30. So, we left Saxilby at 9:00am and arrived in good time at Torksey.
To our surprise, we spotted a lovely (and well frequented) tea room beside the lock. When we had come through Torksey four weeks ago, there were no available moorings, so we had continued to Saxilby and missed this little gem.

A party of very cheery and good natured cyclists had just arrived, halfway through their 40 mile outing. One very jolly and chatty fellow insisted on posing for the photograph. The queue for the tearoom was because the local gardening club had also just arrived!

MM, in the background, waited patiently for our time to leave.

The lock keeper called us in about midday. Three large cruisers had gone through on the first locking, which gave us time to finish our coffee and cake in comfort!

A very large and handsome barge followed us into the lock.

Finally the bottom flood gates opened to let us out on to the Trent.

The Trent is a BIG river! The tide was flowing strongly upstream and the wind was blowing equally strongly in the opposite direction.

It is important to follow the charts to stay in the channel although, with the amount of water in the river, a rising tide and our (relatively) shallow draft, the chance of running aground was minimal. Still, it paid to concentrate.
Half way down, we were surprised to see Joan on nb "Early Byrd" pass us going in the opposite direction. Such a pity as we were hoping to see her at Newark. One day too soon!
It was quite a relief, three hours later, to arrive at Cromwell Lock. With the tide behind us, we had averaged 5 miles an hour - very good going for MM.

Cromwell lock marks the end of the Tidal Trent; above the lock, the Trent is not subject to the tides. We could have stayed at Cromwell overnight but decided to continue on to Newark, knowing that this would give us a relaxed day off tomorrow for R's birthday.
We moored up opposite the castle; this has to be one of the most picturesque moorings along the waterways!

 

Interesting to see that the river through Newark was running slower and more than a foot lower than when we were here a month ago.
Today: 27 miles, 3 locks and 6.7 hours.
Trip: 359 miles, 139 locks and 177.4 hours.

A First Solo and Angel Wing.

Tuesday 3rd September 2019 at Saxilby.
There is a family of swans with eight cygnets in Brayford Pool. The cygnets are getting to be as large as the adults and R had observed that they would soon be ready to start flying. Imagine our delight to see "daddy" taking two of the cygnets for a brief hop at the far end of the Pool. The daddy and one of the cygnets then flew the whole length of Brayford Pool together, with daddy showing the way. At that age, the cygnets can only fly in "ground effect" very close to the water, but they still managed to pass us so fast that we couldn't get to the camera.
As they slowly swam back to their starting point past MM, R rewarded them with some welcome duck food and a lot of praise.

Another resident of Brayford Pool is a solitary Canada Goose suffering from "Angel Wing", a malformation of the "wrist" or outer joint of the wing, usually in male birds and, if only one wing is affected it is often the left wing. We are not normally fans of Canada Geese due to their prolific deposits on every horizontal surface but, over the time we have been in Lincoln, we have become quite fond of this one and christened him "Norman" (no-mates).

The cause of Angel Wing may be partly genetic but is also due to a diet too high in carbohydrates and protein and lacking in vitamins. It is often found in birds that are over-fed on bread. In an adult, it is incurable and renders them flightless.
We saw a gentleman in a wheel chair who feeds Norman proper duck food by hand each morning so, in the short term, he will be OK. He is ostracised by his own kind but seems to get on fine with other types of geese, ducks and even the swan family.

This is our last morning in Lincoln. R discovered that a very well known model railway organisation called "DigiTrains" is based nearby - so a visit before we left was a must!

As expected, although it is a model shop that sells all the bits you could want, their main expertise is in DCC systems, decoders and fitting sound systems into train models. M was thrilled to find R's birthday gift there and R was equally thrilled to find lots of answers to his questions about fitting sound to model engines. Watch this space for further details on Thursday!

So, finally, a month after we arrived, we said farewell to lovely Lincoln. Our time in the Fenlands has undoubtedly been the highlight of this year's summer cruise.
As we left Brayford Pool and started up the Fossdyke, we followed the trip boat the "Brayford Belle" loaded with sightseers. We could hear snatches of the recorded commentary as we followed them. A couple of miles further on, the "Brayford Belle" turned round for its trip back.

We were delighted to see that Becky, the Brayford Harbour Manager, was on board and we waved to her as they passed and thanked her for her hospitality over the last few weeks.

It was a very pleasant cruise up the Fossdyke on a lovely sunny day. We speculated that when the Romans built the Fossdyke in around 120AD it would have been narrower with lower banks, but the scene would not have been that much different from now.

We called in to Burton Waters Marina for some diesel. We described it earlier but it really is a large village with moorings rather than a marina. As before, the service was excellent.

This was an unusual sight, two narrowboats travelling together breasted up for no apparent reason. The railway follows the Fossdyke between Lincoln and Saxilby and the little two-coach train was the same one that brought us all the way from Brockholes in Huddersfield to Lincoln on Sunday.

Tonight's mooring was at the village of Saxilby.

Today: 5 miles, 0 locks and  1.5 hours.
Trip: 332 miles, 136 locks and 170.7 hours.

RAF Scampton, 617 Squadron and the Dams Raid.

Monday 2nd September 2019 at RAF Scampton.
RAF Scampton has a Heritage Centre, so we had applied to arrange a tour and, after filling in a few forms, were accepted for today at 11:00am. A bit of research showed that there was a bus to RAF Scampton that would get us there at 10:45. No Problem?
The bus was a bit late, dropped us at the married quarters and the bus driver said he had no idea where the main gate was (it later turned out that he drives past it!).
We stopped a passing motorist who said it was back to the main road and a few hundred yards to the left - about a third of a mile with no footpath along a very busy major A road. We ended up legging it against the clock and arrived just as the "tour" was about to leave the main gate. Everyone else was in their cars so the guides gave us a lift in theirs into the base and over to the Heritage Centre, which is housed in one of the original hangars. The guides are all civilians and the Centre is run by a charity, not by the RAF.
There were about 15 of us and we were broken up into three groups. Our group started with the "Timeline" that covered the history of the RAF from the days of the Royal Flying Corps through to the present day.
We learned that the reason that the RAF uniforms are "Russian" blue is that the Czar ordered a huge amount of blue serge in 1917 for his Cossacks just before the Russian revolution - so it needed to find a home and was going cheap!
After a cup of tea or coffee in the canteen, served by the guides, we went upstairs and into Guy Gibson's office, where his dog "Nigger" sits patiently under the desk waiting for his master to return.

On the wall is the Operations Board for the night of the Dams raid.

The guide explained that, in his opinion, Richard Todd was mis-cast in the Dam Busters film because he was a really nice chap and Guy Gibson was not. Gibson was very successful but a bit of a maverick and not very popular with many of the junior officers and NCOs. We guess that you don't get to be so successful in a job like that by being "Mr Nice Guy" (sorry for the pun - unintentional).
While we were there, a Red Arrows Hawk taxied by.

The Red Arrows team is currently in the USA, so this was a spare aircraft. It appears that the pilot might have to fly it over to the States and needed to get "current" on the Hawk, so needed to accumulate some hours flying it. Imagine being given a Hawk and just be told to go a fly around for a while to remember how to fly it. "Jammy Toe-Rag", said M.
The guide then took us step by step through the raid indicating on a large "Role of Honour" board, the attack, and the fate of each aircraft in turn. Very humbling to see the number of those who did not survive the night and even more so to realise that only half the survivors of that night lived to the end of the war.
Downstairs in the hangar, is a "surplus" Hawk that we could climb into. For a fast jet fighter trainer, it is very basic and they are all beginning to show their age. The Red Arrows first started using them in 1979, 40 years ago.

M also managed to shoehorn herself in and even maintain her dignity (the guide said that he wouldn't look and went off somewhere else!). The cockpit is very cramped.

Next to this Hawk was a rather sorry looking Folland Gnat, which the Red Arrows used before the Hawk. The Gnat is one of R's favourite aircraft - so small that you could almost fit it into a double garage with its 22ft (6.7m) wingspan.

Outside is one of the original "Up Keep" bouncing bombs. This one was recovered from the sea after one of the early tests. It is frightening to think of something weighing 6,600lbs (3,000kg) spinning at 500 rpm in an aircraft. The vibration and the gyroscopic effects must have been extreme.

Close to that and just outside Guy Gibson's first floor office, is the grave of his black labrador dog "Nigger" who was killed outside the main gate the night before the raid. Gibson insisted that his death be kept a secret until after the raid and asked his WREN driver to bury the dog at a quarter past midnight, when Gibson would be making his attack on the Mohne Dam.

A fascinating tour which took over three hours during which time the guide hardly drew breath. He was full of information on the RAF, Scampton airfield, the Dams Raid and the history of 617 squadron.
After the tour, our guide who was a retired fireman, very kindly offered to drive us back into Lincoln. A very welcome offer as the bus service only ran every two hours and we had just missed one.
We rewarded ourselves with some tea and cake at the tea shop at the top of Steep Hill before returning to MM.

A Special Weekend with Jenni and the Alvis.

Friday 30th August to Sunday 1st September 2019 away in Huddersfield.
Our dear friend Jenni in Huddersfield kept her husband's Alvis after he died some years ago. It is an unconventional 1934 Alvis Speed 20; unconventional because her husband Barry built it from parts that he sourced from many different places and, although almost everything is genuine Alvis, it did not all date to 1934. Nevertheless, it is a magnificent beast with an Alvis straight six engine that produces a prodigious amount of power.
Jenni keeps the car at a local organisation that specialises in looking after classic cars and, after taking the train to Brockholes, her local station, she drove us all over to pick up the Alvis, which was waiting for us.

There had been problems with the fuel in the Alvis going off and depositing wax in everything, so they had drained the tank, cleaned everything up and then put some fresh fuel in. Not enough apparently, because as soon as we started to go uphill, the engine stopped. It turned out that the fuel feed is at the front of the tank and as you went uphill, all the fuel ran to the back of the tank. More fuel was added and we were able to drive back to Jenni's for the night.

On Saturday morning, we set off to a little pub just south of Leek where a regular meeting takes place of Alvis owners. It was about 60 miles and Jenni led the way in her car with her son Ed and M on board. Because rain was forecast, we fitted the hood to the Alvis, which makes it quite difficult to get in and out as there are no doors!

The Alvis is basically 85 years old so driving it requires a great deal of concentration. and your full attention - particularly at speed. It was very gratifying to find that most of the time we were at the back of a queue of traffic, rather than the cause of a queue of traffic.
It took us a little over two hours to cover the distance and arrive at the Yew Tree pub where the meet took place. It was the first time that Jenni and Barry's Alvis had come to the meeting since Barry died and the warm welcome that we received was really touching. Gradually a beautiful collection of cars appeared covering over four decades of Alvis production from earlier pre-war cars...

... to more streamlined post-war models including this lovely example that was originally built for the chief engineer of Alvis.

At the end of the afternoon there was a presentation for the car that had travelled the furthest and Jenni was presented with a handsome engraved hip flask sporting the Alvis logo.

For the first half of the journey home, William, Jenni's elder son came in the Alvis as a passenger. For the second half, M sat in the passenger seat. She was rather horrified to find that there were, of course, no seat belts and the ride was not as refined as a modern car, but she enjoyed it nonetheless. Because of the concentration required and the twisty, narrow roads through the Derbyshire Dales, she said it felt like sitting beside Stirling Moss doing the Mille Miglia!
The Alvis was going to be picked up next day, so we put her back into the garage at Jenni's and, on Sunday morning, took the train back to Lincoln. Unbelievably, the train went direct from tiny Brockholes station to Lincoln without any changes. It was only two carriages and very bumpy!
We rewarded ourselves with afternoon tea in the High Bridge Café on the bridge over the River Witham.

A very special weekend with very special friends.