Monday 20th to Sunday 26th July 2009
At 9.30 on Monday we started the engine and stuck the pointy end towards the north. The remaining locks of the Soar held no surprises and after admiring the Ratcliffe power station chimneys again and again and again we finally put them behind us and sailed out onto the River Trent.
A right turn where we normally go left put us at the start of our new adventure, to the north, up the east coast highway towards the Humber. Having only the barest knowledge of what lay before us our eyes devoured everything that moved and we studied carefully every notice warning boaters of dangers ahead.
At the first lock, to our surprise, we bumped into nb Jabulani, fellow travellers from Loughborough, coming from Nottingham and now heading towards Birmingham. This idea of ending the journey at Nottingham and returning south seemed too common for my liking and got me wondering what was putting people off. Was it the Trent perhaps?
We cut short our day once we’d entered the tranquillity of the Beeston Cut and walked back to the river to watch other boaters scream down the Trent and perform white knuckle manoeuvres as they fought for a place on the lock landing.
Some might say the river was calm today but there are reminders along the way that things can change quickly.
Back on the boat our neighbours on nb.Innisfree made us feel at home by pointing out TV aerial alignment and confessing they were Blog readers. I admire anyone who has the courage to build his own boat and this was obviously no ordinary narrowboat. I must have looked at the stern many times before it dawned on me there was nowhere to put the tiller arm. Hidden under that canopy must be a wheel.
After taking a day-off for rain we pulled in the ropes and did the Nottingham tour, often below street leve, and ended up on the river again surrounded by football and cricket grounds. We were going to visit the town hall and wave at the BBC TV cameras in the hope that we’d appear on tele’ but decided against it when we saw how much of the journey was still in front of us.
The cruise down to Hazleford Lock with its 48hr moorings was a dream. We felt spoilt having electrified locks and it was good to be back on a river and, better than the Thames, the banks weren’t plastered with no mooring signs. The Trent isn’t private like the Thames, it didn’t suffer us, it welcomed us.
On the way we spotted two boats from the boat kits supplier near Peterborough. There was Papillon, last seen on the Fens and Ollie, seen at Loughborough last week. Both Dutch barge in shape they look so attractive, drool - drool. Other boats of great interest to me were old dredgers, hulks and converted barges of enormous proportions. If ever I need a big boat fix I’ll come up here instead of going down the Thames.
Newark Castle looked impressive on the right hand bank and though we didn’t stop this time we’ve made a note to pull over and explore the place on the way south.
Newark Nether Lock keeper John, or Della to his friends(!?) asked V how she felt about going down the Trent. She answered by saying she was a little nervous to which he replied he was scared stiff of what he was about to do. He told her he was kayaking from Darlaston in Staffordshire to Trent Falls on the Humber for charity, starting on the 25th, in two days time. He told us he’d never kayaked before but now he was committed to 165 miles of it in aid of Beaumond House Community Hospice. Brave man.
As rivers go the Trent looks promising for a bit of excitement. “There’s a bit of water on” a passing boater shouted to us as we flew out of a lock, and when I queried the journey time to Torksey the lock keeper replied “you’ll be there half an hour early - there’s five foot of fresh”.
Unsure of the procedures at Torksey Cut and Keadby Lock I asked a lock keeper on the way down if there was any advice he could give and whether there were techniques for getting into the locks on the tidal section. He told me there was nothing to it, just watch the others. That didn’t exactly fill me with confidence so I determined to consult as many boaters as possible and err on the safe side.
As it happens the first part of the journey down was a doddle, the tide eased us along at 6.5 mph and we hardly saw a soul. We saw a few narrow boats pushing against the tide but all seemed to be making good progress, none struggling.
Although warned in the literature to keep out of the way of commercial craft we only saw one barge, she was 600 tons –ish and approaching Cromwell lock to turn and load at the nearby wharf. We didn’t feel threatened and I doubt he gave one thought for us because the river is wide enough to take a couple of cruise liners.
Thursday
At Torksey we found one space left on the transit pontoons. Being 20 foot too long for the tail end of a pontoon we knew we’d hang off the end so using only bow and centre line we were pleased when the tide’s gentle rise and fall didn’t throw us off.
The atmosphere in the Cut was reasonably jolly but I sensed a bit of them-and-us, us on this pontoon and them on the one opposite. We eyed each other trying to work out who was going downstream and who was going upstream and who were friends with whom.
We formed our own gang on our pontoon, just two boats going downstream on the morrow. What drew us closer was discovering we both knew a family in Cornwall 33 years ago. Our new friends Dave and Jenny on Beulah-Ellen emigrated to NZ long ago and when hearing that we still kept in touch with said family in Cornwall passed on their greetings through us.
Don’t ask me how it all works, what with emigrating and still cruising in England. Something to do with summers here on a narrow boat and summers there on a sailing boat. Sounds good to me.
To stretch our legs after covering so many miles standing to attention we walked to the lock to see who was living on the other side. Hoards of white plastic boats fast asleep on pontoons met us so we turned to go back home and were gladdened to find a table of home made produce at the lock house back door. I can thoroughly recommend the plum chutney.
If you don’t ask about start times for the journey to Keadby you won’t have it forced on you. You can phone or you can follow the examples of others or you can study the tide tables, calculate distances and tide speeds and come up with a result. I was perfectly happy with my calculations until the morning of departure when I discovered we were on British Summer Time while the tide tables were printed for GMT.
When D day arrived my eyes were on the steel pontoon post watching the tide rise foot by foot. At 10.20, not 10.30 as previously agreed there was a starting of engines so we jumped into action and made second place on the grid.
Out of the cut and against the tide we crawled along at 3.5 mph and spotted another narrowboat about a mile in front. He stayed there the whole journey, just a dark shape on the horizon, sometimes disappearing from view but reappearing again as we reached straight sections of river.
But before long a small cruiser crept up on us and a while later we spotted another bunch of boats far behind us. Sometimes in line and sometimes spread across the river these tiny dots were travelling together with bow waves telling us that they were doing some serious motoring.
As the tide turned we speeded up and the GPS told me we were doing a respectable 7 to 8 mph. Passing West Stockwith Lock on our left we saw who we presumed to be the lady lock keeper on the phone watching the traffic bound for Keadby and the Humber.
Mile after mile of pancake flat fields with an occasional tump of a hill passed us on the left and the right. I suppose it shouldn’t have been any surprise that this was power station alley, there are few villages and even fewer towns along the way so no one to protest about blots on the landscape. With plenty of evidence of new building work at many of the power stations I questioned my beliefs that they were in decline and in need of additional atomic energy stations from France.
But while we gazed at the vapours from the cooling towers over the river bank we were brought back to earth by puffs of smoke from Beulah-Ellen’s engine room. Reducing speed we drew near to see if we could assist. Dave emerged minutes later to say all was well after removing something that had fallen onto the engine exhaust.
But too late for us, the gaggle of boats behind were upon us and try as I might we couldn’t pull away. They passed at what must have been 10 mph to our 8 and it was obvious that even though they sailed together there was some rivalry between them and in the end the shortest narrowboat took the lead before Keadby lock.
On the way we came upon a rather unusual lift bridge, it was designed to have one end filled with water to tilt it upwards and allow tall ships to pass. I rather hoped it might lift for us but nothing happened. We saw our first and last proper ship at this point on the river and my mind went back 30 years to a previous life aboard tankers.
Here’s a useless piece of information, each year the Trent chucks more water into the Humber than the Thames chucks into the sea. That must say something about its size and the respect given it in times of flood.
We were struck by the lack of boats or ships on the Trent, we’d heard so many stories about giant barges eating narrowboats for breakfast but nothing, just a handful of tiny craft taking the tide downstream. Another thing that surprised me was how the apparent gentlemanly start to the journey finished as a race. The locals that know these waters don’t mind where they go, darting across the river to benefit from the deeper, faster water. And on their approach to their destination they bleat like sheep on the VHF pleading for gates to be opened ready for them.
But now I know their little ways I’ll be ready next time. I’ve just got to fix a bracket on the back door for the VHF and make a table where I can spread out my charts and follow that deep water channel.
Four and a half hours after leaving Torksey the race was over and we all turned 180 degrees at the lock and sat in the channel adjusting engine revs to hold our place in the queue.
Waiting an hour in the tide you can see why there’s a hurry to get off the Trent. The river is dropping, the cill of the bottom gates is rising to meet our base plate and the locky is all on his own. When he isn’t operating the buttons in the office he’s catching ropes at the lock side, answering desperate boaters on the VHF, chatting to his lock keeper friends on his mobile phone and after all that, opening the swing bridge above the top gates to let us out onto the canal.
What’s worse is he can only squeeze in three narrowboats at a time, one each side and one down the middle.
It can take 30 minutes to cycle through everything and us poor blighters outside haven’t a clue what’s going on because we can’t see the lock gates and to make things worse there are no red or green lights showing in our direction.
When it comes to your turn you rely on the mistakes or successes of the boat in front to guide you on the approach and the turn into the lock. With a fast current against you it’s cautious to creep up to the lock and judge the water’s effect before turning. At the moment of commitment you realise you’re either going too fast or too slow and it takes swift action to correct your movement so that you enter without touching anything. With apologies to the very nice couple aboard Elizabeth-Ellen here is the situation one or two found themselves in.
Apart from the slow fill on this lock there was one thing worth noting. Several stones are carved with delicate mason’s marks. I’ll save your yawns by leaving out descriptions and pictures.
My thoughts on our journey down the Trent? Fun, a lot of fun and the non locals, those of us without a bus to catch, enjoyed the experience with its speed (8+ mph in the last hour), its sights and the thrill of the wide river with its sunken islands, the red marl rocks and mud banks, all to be avoided. We cheated by using the river sketches and tide tables passed on by Mr. Locksley (at Kilby Bridge) and carefully plotted our course from side to side missing everything dangerous to shipping. Our two feet draft would have happily skimmed over every one of them I guess but the 600 ton gravel barges might have had trouble had they wandered from the course.
Going back up stream might be fun particularly with a mind to tides because I’m told there’s only a two hour flow as opposed to a nine hour ebb. But that can wait, our minds are now on Wakefield, Doncaster and Sheffield, mine’s on Goole too but I don’t think I’ll get that one past V.
By Friday night we’d done Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and now we were in North Lincolnshire. The night passed quietly under a bridge somewhere along the Stainforth and Keadby Canal but stones on the roof at 6.15am kicked off our day a little earlier than planned. “Nobody for miles” said the next boater, safe as houses we thought but obviously on someone’s route home to Crowle from a party in Belton. Nothing damaged, or at least we shan’t see any damage until after the rain gets into the paint chips.
Goodbye Lincolnshire, we’re now in Yorkshire and beginning to get the feel of northern canals. Struck by the lack of boats on the move or moored on the canal we start thinking we must be off the beaten track. There are no signs that boats moor along the towpaths, lily pads have taken over and there are continuous armpit high weeds with the exception of tiny clearings opposite numbers painted on the offside. This is serious angler country by the look of it and once through passport control at the Lincs / Yorks border we found hundreds of them. This is Saturday and woe betides boaters that venture out on a match day between 10am and 4pm. It would have been murder for progress had the canal not been so wide.
There’s no need for winding places, they built the canal wide enough for big boats and we can spin a 60 footer almost anywhere. This is still a route for commercial craft and there’s a chance we’ll meet a 300 ton barge looking for somewhere to dump its gravel.
The land around us is quite flat, where we can see through the stinging nettles, but away in the distance we saw the remains of slag heaps, grey mountains higher than trees with patches of green clinging to their sides.
Villages pop up along the way, some with boats, mostly plastic ones. Louis and Joshua’s boatyard on our left reminded us of our visit here in 2004. One or two unanswered questions at the time led us to place our boat order elsewhere, with no regrets so far.
Plenty of lift and swing bridges keep you in good shape, some need pushing with your backside, something V is very good at, but I was shocked to find many had been electrified.
Where the railway runs alongside the canal it isn’t unusual to see a fella come out of his hut and close the road barriers across the track at the same time as the canal bridge is opened. Why this happens I haven’t a clue. V asked one of them if the railway was disused because we hadn’t seen a train for two days to which he replied that it most certainly was a working railway and the next train was due in September.
Strange lock gear appears here and there, some using chains to open and close the gates and managed with a standard windlass.
We almost stopped at Thorne but it was light on mooring places. We almost stopped at South Bramwith but it’s a busy spot for weekenders running to and from their marinas so we took a right up the New Junction Canal.
This canal is dead straight and goes for 5 miles or so. The monotony is broken by swing and lift bridges with buttons to press which makes operation easier. We fought the anglers for a couple of miles but gave up when we found a two boat length of heavy duty cofferdam piling.
Pins or no pins we’re staying here for what’s left of the weekend, anything to see the back of those anglers.
Was this a national or international match I wondered. Must have been hundreds of them. I was told the winner caught 2 kgs of fish in six hours. But it would have been different if I hadn’t lost three hooks to those bream under that tree, said one guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I wonder what they talked about in the pub afterwards, is it like boaters with pumps and toilets and hire boat antics?
The sun came out in the evening, nearly as warm as down south, so I did the decent thing and barbied everything on the plate.
The local accent hasn’t gone unnoticed but I’m trying hard not to copy it. We still haven’t got over our cruise to Bristol and accentuating our Rs is a difficult one to get out of.
Sunday we stayed put. It’s a good job I stuck the aerial into the sky last night because it rained this morning, in fact it rained on and off all day. We watched the passing boats, plastic slightly outnumbering steel I’m afraid so that tells you something about the place we’re at.
Friends Dave and Jenny on Beulah-Ellen came past as I was cooking breakfast (for me, V has healthy cereal), and we waved and shouted stuff across the canal.
It’s a wide canal so you have to shout but the advantage is you don’t have to slow down, you can hammer past without affecting moored boats. That’s a plus point for the north. I’ll do my best to think of another.
