Referendums, Rivers and TV Traumas

Sunset below Kegworth Deep Lock

I try to follow my late dad’s rule; “I never discuss politics or religion at social events” – he was a minister - and my blog, facebook and Twitter are social things to me. BUT.  I have to give a few lines to the horror (for want of a better word) of the last 24 hours as a UK citizen.  I thought Mike was winding me up when he woke me around 5am yesterday to say the UK was leaving the EU.  I couldn’t believe it – really???!!!  I lay in shock for the next hour before dozing off again, only to awaken later and discover it hadn’t been a bad dream…. How did that happen??!!  I had been quite relaxed about it all, oh yes, I did vote, but I kind of thought I probably didn’t need to, that there was no way we would REALLY leave the EU, but it would be close enough to give the EU Power Monkeys a bit of a fright.  I was wrong.  I’d seen the news and later in the day the interviews with people already regretting they’d voted leave as it was only now sinking in what they’d done.  A phone call to my mother (a leaver) also hinted at why this has happened.  The conversation went like this:

Mum: You’ll be feeling a bit down today then?

Me: Yep.  Kind of scuppers our France plans somewhat.

Mum: Does it?

Me: Well, currently we get reciprocal health care in other EU countries, so in France we pay at source, but can claim it back from the NHS when we get home.  Now if we get ill in France, we’ll have to come home to see our doctor, or pay for private there or claim on travel insurance…

Mum: Really???....... Oh………… (Clueless)

Me: And I guess we might not be able to buy a house there now quite so easily, or live in it permanently.  (Which we plan(ned) to do in the next few years).

Mum:  Oh.  Will it affect things like that? (Duh!)

Me: Yes.

Mum: Oh.

Pause

Mum: Well, (smiling), you’ll just need to live somewhere else……

In the evening, an elderly gent walked past, sporting an England flag on his walking stick, commented on what a great day it was.  Mike remarked, well, Scotland will now likely have a referendum to become independant, how do you feel about that.  "Oh no they won't.  They can't.  They've had their vote." was the reply, "Yes, but there has been a fundamental change in politics now", Mike's reply fell on deaf ears.  He may have got what he wants on Thursday, but no idea at what price......

Then today, on the local East Midlands news, two elderly ladies, in their 80s, delighted that their vote to leave won because, “We just want it to be like the good old days. It’ll be like the good old days again.”  Oh goodie – another World War ladies and some rationing – fantastic.  Thanks from all those people who live life going forward and don’t look back.
 

I am thankfully relieved I am Scottish and will not call myself British today.

Right, off the soap box and back to boating!!!!!  We were in Newark last post….

 

Coming into Newark, we moored on the town Wharf - on the left

Although moored against the wall, we had a nice view!!

As we were stuck due to a fast flowing Trent, and fairly far north, we took advantage of some tickets to a charity masked ball in Scunthorpe.  The charity is Team Verrico, founded by a friend and work acquaintance of Mike’s, when his young wife died from a rare strain of breast cancer, leaving behind her husband and two very small children.  They do fantastic work funding people to have second opinions in Harley St and funding treatment for people diagnosed with rare and deadly forms of the disease.

 

I thought Mike looked better in the Hannibal Lecter one.....

No show without Punch!!  The company of Vicki and Poor James helped make for a great night.  I don't think James would appreciate me publishing his 'Phantom' photo tho'.....

Needless to say, a few libations were taken (again) and heads were slightly woolly the next day when we headed up to York, in a hired car, and caught up with some friends and had a look round the town.  Monday we kicked our heels before Mike’s doc appointment to see about his knee, which is niggling now on a semi-permanent basis and he’s wearing a support most days.  (Or maybe he just really doesn’t want to do any locks….).  We then headed back to Newark, where we’d left the boat in the marina for the weekend, just to be on the safe side with water levels etc. and moved back out on to the river where there was a space on the floating pontoon moorings.

By Tuesday we were itching to leave and as the boat behind set off, they confirmed the lockies advised that we should be okay getting to Nottingham, though there was still a bit of flow, they expected it to get worse again after more rain expected that evening.  We took the chance to move and headed off, aiming to get as close to Nottingham as possible, depending on conditions.  It was slow going…..

 

Leaving lovely Newark and its castle behind as we wait for town lock

Traffic coming downstream was whizzing by, but we saw more boats moving in a few hours than we'd seen all week

At Fiskerton we saw a familiar boat, NB Lillyanne and Pip waving from the back.  We follow their blog and locked up Buckby Flight with them last year, then passed them again later on the Trent & Mersey - nice to see you!!!

Neil - Big excitement as I saw an Armitage sign in the distance

You can imagine my disappointment to find it wasn't the toilet people, but Pet Care :(

Rowers riding our bow wave as we come into Nottingham

Much relief as we come through the lock and back onto canal - and breeeeaaaaaatttthhhhhh...

Another one fished out - we didn't name this one, just in case...

We got to Nottingham after a mammoth 8 hours cruising and after fishing out another pigeon from the water under one of the road bridges coming into town, completely knackered, but delighted to moor up in front of Richard, who we’d last seen down at St Neots, a few weeks ago.  He’d gone back up the Nene, up the Grand Union, Oxford and then Eastwards along the Trent & Mersey, where he’d had to sit at Shardlow for a few days to wait for the river levels to settle down again.

I’m glad to say that this time, the pigeon made it!!  After an hour in a towel on the stove, we sat it on the back deck with some seed and water and as the sun went down, it stepped onto our doorstep to the cabin and cooried down for the night – awwwww…. Wee thing….  However, we couldn’t go to bed leaving the back doors open, so we built a wee shelter for it on the deck to keep it safe and went to bed.  In the morning, it was still there, staring at me as I opened the doors, but not keen to get close, so I lifted it and popped it on the roof of the boat, which it proceeded to run down.  It stopped halfway and perched on our centreline rope for 5 minutes or so, then, as I chatted to an angler on the path, it took off and soared into the sky and onto the roof of a nearby building.  I hope it has safe travels.  And stays away from the water.

We spent a couple of nights at Nottingham and enjoyed our stay.  It’s a nice city and we spent the next day with Richard doing touristy stuff and then went out for dinner and beers.

We visited the City of Caves, a fascinating section of the city built into the sandstone cliffs, now sat under a shopping centre.  This was the town tannery many moons ago.

One of the pub cellars carved into the cliffs.

Spot Mike!

The canal cutting through the city

Nice moorings next to Sainsburys

 After our usual leisurely start on Thursday, we set off again, keen to get off the rivers as soon as possible as there seemed to be lots of rain and thunderstorms and the likes on the horizon.  We headed to the end of the Nottingham-Beeston canal and stopped to fill up water, watching another couple of boats go through the lock and onto the River Trent.  Just as we had finished on the water tap and got into the lock, NB Still Waters (who we’d chatted with the previous day in Nottingham) appeared to go up with us.  It was a slightly traumatic locking up as a swan family had decided to join us.  We almost had a mother duck and her tiny, tiny babies as well, but Mike and Pete (from NB Still Waters) managed to ‘shooooo!!!!’ them out!  The swans however were at the front and were in for the ride.  As Felicity and I very slowly raised the paddles, the swans went along the side of Still Waters…. Pete pushed the boat away from the wall a far as he could and the two adults and three of the four babies got through.  The fourth got stuck and was squeaking like mad for the others and I was so sure it would go silent at some point as it got trapped between the boat and the wall…. Pete tried to grab it, but it finally ducked past him and all were reunited safe and well – phew…..!!  As we like to travel quite fast on the river – cause we can and it means we get off it sooner! – we soon caught up the two boats in front and waited in line at the next lock to go up.  This took us onto the Cranfleet Cut, where we left Still Waters to take water, through the Cranfleet flood gate (open at last!!!) and to the junction where we took a left to head south on the River Soar and to Leicester.

 

This depot of chemical toilets went a little way to make up for the Armitage disappointment on the way in

Which way?

We'll go left I think

 

This looked way too much like hard work!!

We stopped for diesel at Kegworth marina (57p a litre!!!) then moored up just below the flood lock there, where we had stopped almost a year to the day!!  Mike made a start on the tea whilst I went for a run, had a shower, put up the tv aerial, which is where the fun began.  We couldn’t get a signal.  And it was Referendum Night.  I moved the aerial 360 degrees re-tuning every couple of inches, but nothing.  So at about 7pm, we moved to the other side of the flood gates and across the other side of the water to see if we could get one there, but still nothing.  So we moved on hoping to find somewhere less closed in……  Below the next lock was a single, small mooring, just in front of the lock moorings, so we stopped, put the aerial up again and tried – wooohooooo!!!  Signal, weak, only BBC 1, BBC 2 and BBC 4 but that was all we needed.  We were delighted and it was double delight to see that the resident fox at Kegworth Deep Lock, who we first saw last year, was still there, looking very healthy, but with a few grey hairs through his red.

 

Wee foxy having a scratch - wonder how old he is?

A fine brush indeed!  Looking out for more boats coming....

We had our dinner, watched a film, then settled down around 10.30pm to watch the referendum stuff.  No signal.  I spent half an hour twisting and tuning the aerial again, we would get something, but it was so weak, if we moved on the boat, it disappeared.  At 11.30pm Mike decided to go up the lock.  I wisnae happy.   I said I’d only help if we wore life jackets.  The lock is in the middle of nowhere so it was pitch black, and it’s not called Kegworth Deep Lock for nothing.  It’s not something I want to make a habit of, doing deep locks in the dark, but I’d take it over doing the Wash again any day!!!  We took it slowly armed with lights and torches and we safely got to the top and naughtily moored on the end of the lock moorings (which are long enough for two or three boats our size, so we didn’t feel tooooooo bad…).  There was absolutely no signal.  So we were resigned to Radio 5 Live for the night.  I headed to bed after the Sunderland numbers were declared, which made me nervous, but I was sure the rest of the country would do the right thing.

Well, you’ve read the first paragraph so I can skip to our travels on Friday now.  A boat arrived to go down the lock (with the fox keeping a close eye) just after 9am and we finished our cups of tea and headed off shortly after.  We were heading for Loughborough, but figured we’d be there quite early and as it was a nice day, we’d keep going til we felt like stopping.  At the first lock we reached, another boat, NB Hisnayres (I think a take on His and Hers??) was waiting to go up, so we were able to pair up – woohooo!  The locks on the Soar are quite feisty and it’s much easier going up with someone else.  They headed out first, but soon pulled over as Mrs Hisnayres had left her mug at the lock, so we passed them and said we’d see them at the next lock.  The next lock was in our favour, so we thought we’d go in and then wait for the others to arrive.  However, there was a boat approaching the lock from above, to come down and it would mean making them wait to, so we thought we should just come up, but as we got in and Mike started to shut the gate, he saw the other boat coming round the corner so we waited for them.  We had them with us for the next lock, then they peeled off down to the basin at Loughborough for some shopping and we kept going.  And kept going, and kept going, up the lock at Mount Sorrell where we finally moored up.  Just as we got the ropes tied and tiller put away, the heavens opened and it rained for the next couple of hours.  Mike then decided it would be nice to have a shorter day on Saturday, going into Leicester, so around half 5 we set off again, up the next three locks and few miles cruising, mooring in a lovely rural spot above Junction Lock.  It was here that I realised we had no bacon, no rolls and my name would be mud in the morning.  We moored up, put the telly on and licked our wounds and marvelled at the shortsightedness of people.

To Mike’s disgust, we had our usual muesli, fruit and yoghurt healthy breakfast this morning – we’ll treat ourselves to a Wetherspoon’s breakfast tomorrow in town - and headed off in the sun, but surrounded by black clouds, towards Leicester.  The River Soar is pretty, but it’s amazing how little of it we remember from last year.  A waterway can look so different when you’re approaching it from the other way!  And we traversed it in bad weather last year and there was a bit of a flow on it, whereas this year, the weather has been fine and the water levels all normal.  We reached Leicester around 1.30pm and got a space on the lovely new CRT moorings at Friar’s Mill – thank you CRT, they are fantastic.  The water points work, but they’ve yet to have the power connected, and its gates are secured with a BW key (which all boaters have), so it’s got facilities, is secure and is a floating pontoon, so safe in times of flood – very nice!  We did a few tasks on board, went to Tescos and are now safely ensconced in front of New Order at Glastonbury on the tv – as we have a signal (after moving down the pontoon a bit!).  The black clouds have finally come over us and dropped a lot of water but we’re safe and sound on our pontoon mooring.  Wish I could say the same for our country……