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| 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….
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| Coming into Newark, we moored on the town Wharf - on the left |
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| 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.
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| I thought Mike looked better in the Hannibal Lecter one..... |
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| 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…..
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| Leaving lovely Newark and its castle behind as we wait for town lock |
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| Traffic coming downstream was whizzing by, but we saw more boats moving in a few hours than we'd seen all week |
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| 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!!! |
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| Neil - Big excitement as I saw an Armitage sign in the distance |
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| You can imagine my disappointment to find it wasn't the toilet people, but Pet Care :( |
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| Rowers riding our bow wave as we come into Nottingham |
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| Much relief as we come through the lock and back onto canal - and breeeeaaaaaatttthhhhhh... |
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| 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.
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| 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. |
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| One of the pub cellars carved into the cliffs. |
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| Spot Mike! |
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| The canal cutting through the city |
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| 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.
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| This depot of chemical toilets went a little way to make up for the Armitage disappointment on the way in |
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| Which way? |
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| We'll go left I think |
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| 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.
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| Wee foxy having a scratch - wonder how old he is? |
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| 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……
