Day three – About Turn!

It’s an early start this morning and we still haven’t decided which way to go. We can go onto the River Soar or continue up the Trent and onto the Trent and Mersey Canal. Decision, decisions.

I make a bit of rookie mistake when filling the Cranfleet lock as the paddle wasn’t completely down – so, so close but in my defence, they are quite stiff to close and the gates are very leaky ((Okay, okay enough excuses going off their Peachy. You’re new. Mistakes are allowed just don’t do it again)) anyway a nice chap came and gave us a hand as he said they can be tricky and it regularly happens so i felt better. I know the canal is struggling further up so i don’t want to be responsible for water wastage. We only open one gate rather than both though as there was a dead goose which would have gotten squished in the gate – ewwwww. I know best practice is to open both as even a little bump against them will cause damage over time even if you’re experienced enough to glide through without touching the gates.

Through the lock, and the flood gate is open which isn’t surprising as the river is very low as other than a bit of rain here and there it has been really dry for a while. We moor just after as we still haven’t decided which way to go and we are both feeling a little tired today, and let’s face it, we are not in any rush.

Finally, we decided to go down the River Soar only to get to the first lock and find two boaters had been in there about 45 minutes and it still hadn’t filled properly. We decided to about turn and head back in our original destination which would take us past the marina where we bought the boat and stayed for a few nights ahead of bringing it back to Newark, which feels like quite a nice milestone.

We arrive at Sawley Lock which is manned by volunteers who tell us a tree has come down on the canal further up which they are hopefully going to clear, else we might be heading back to Newark at this rate. But we decide we might as well carry on and see what happens. The joys and adventure of the boating life.

It was really windy as we were cruising along and the boat was being pulled all over the place. We ended up doing a couple of locks with a lovely couple who had hired their boat for a few weeks and they kindly waited for us as we attempted to moor about 42 million times without success. Always nice to share the load of filling and emptying the locks, as well as having a natter.

It’s a bit tight on the turns through Sawley as it seems most of the boaters going down the Soar have turned back so we are at the head of a boating convey. We try and fail to moor a few times as I said earlier, once because we couldn’t get the pins into the ground properly to secure the ropes and as some boaters don’t slow down when they go past, they can easy pull out the pins as happened to us earlier in the day.

We carry on a bit and eventually find a mooring we are happy with and settle down for the night. I’m not feeling too great so it’s a bit of a dodgy night for me and probably why we have a few ‘little’ boating issues tomorrow as you need to have your wits about you for this boating malarky.

It doesn’t help that every time we do something on the boat an alarm goes off! At least they are working though and it’s all just teething problems and us and the boat getting used to each other.

Anyway, that’s day three done and dusted. I did manage some writing today which was lovely, so nice cruising along and writing with the odd glance out of the window.