We start this month still in the village of Horbury Bridge, the river shows no signs of dropping so we could be here for some days yet. Mark has joined us and we are going to drop him off at his home mooring as we pass – , all we need now is for the river to drop and we can get going. Still being marooned here gave us the opportunity to visit the Capri Horbury for the third time in seven days.
The Journey South
The trip to Mark’s boat is around 148 miles with 38 locks, around 44 miles will be on the tidal River Trent, The total journey time should be around 9 days.
We have broken the journey south into three sections, the first from Horbury bridge to Keadby, where the canal gives way to the tidal River Trent, the second section from the first decent mooring below where the tidal Trent ends and the non tidal Trent starts at Cromwell Lock and the third from that first decent mooring to where Mark moors his wide beam home “Green Orchid”
Stage 1- Horbury Bridge to Keadby
The distance of this section is 50 miles with 16 wide locks
In preparation we moved just a half mile nearer the lock that gave access to the river so that we could more closely monitor the situation and get away at the earliest opportunity and on the 5th August after 16 days waiting the gauge finally showed yellow (just!). We made our way into the lock. A CRT chap we had spoken to the day before had said he would, if the water level continued to drop, open the flood gates “ . . . first thing in the morning . . .” and a couple on another boat, also waiting for the water to recede, offered to operate the lock for us so that the helm didn’t have to manoeuvre the boat to a difficult landing stage against the flow to pick up crew. The journey to the first set of flood gates was, with the speed of the water, alarmingly quick and we were relieved to see the flood gates were indeed open and we were able to pass through.
That days journey was 11.5 miles (18.5 km) a distance we would never normally travel in a day but the speed of the flow on the river sections enabled us to cover that distance, which included eight locks and a swing bridge in just 6 hours. We moored at Castleford, because we intended to push on quickly we had planned just one night here but after a phone call from friends who were visiting relatives just a few miles from where we were moored we decided to stay an extra day so we could invite them to join us for lunch on board Fantasma, and had a very pleasant time with friends old (Jan & Pete – known since our school days) and new (Mark – known since 2011).
With river levels continuing to drop we were able to continue at a good pace, although the practices of a certain boatyard at Stanley Ferry amazed us when we stopped for diesel and were told that it was sold “by appointment only” but as the next supplier was around two days cruising away if we did not have enough to get there we could wait and he would fill our tank in between 1 and 1.1/2 hours. I would have pulled the boat for two days rather than give business to someone who was less than 20 steps away but not prepared to pause what he was doing to put around £200 in his till.
The remainder of our cruise to the end of section one at Keadby went almost without a hitch, that is untill we reached Sykehouse Lock. This electrically operated lock has a swing bridge, hand operated, in the middle of it. Carefully following the instructions we emptied the lock, swung the bridge, drive the boat into the lock, filled the lock and pressed the button to open the upper gates – nothing. We re-read the instructions. We tried the gates again. Nothing. We phoned CR&T (Canal and River Trust) who tut tutted and gave us the distinct impression it was all our fault but nevertheless said they would get an engineer to ring us straight back. Within a few minutes the engineer did ring said that the electronics did occasionally get confused and said he was around an hour away but would get to us ASAP as resetting the system had always solved the problem.
Less than an hour latter the engineer was on site, saying he would reset the electronics from the lock-keeper control panel and operate the gates from there. A few minutes later the gates opened and we were once again on our way. The next day we had a notification from CR&T that Sykehouse Lock was closed until an electronic control fault had been diagnosed and corrected.
That night we moored at Keadby junction, five days after starting, section one of our journey south was complete. The next section contains the scary bit – The Tidal Trent.
Our first task on arriving at Keadby Junction was to speak to the lock-keeper who said we could, if ready, lock out onto the tidal River Trent at noon the following day, he asked the boat name and where we were moored and said he would visit us next morning to check we were fully prepared.
There is a Facebook page titled “Trentlink – Safe Navigation of the Tidal River Trent”, we were lucky enough to meet it’s founder and moderator, Nick Roberts, while at Keadby. Nick is immensely knowledgable on all aspects of the tidal Trent and he spared time to give us a great deal of information regarding a safe passage of the river and, after extolling the virtue of buddying up with another boater to give mutual support, he introduced us to Carol and Kim on NB ‘Cos We Can. Although experienced narrow-boaters they had taken ownership of “Cos We Can” just a day or so previously and were happy to have company for mutual back watching.
Nick also advised us to get the charts of the passage prepared by a local boating club but sadly the lock keeper who normally stocks them had run out. “ . . . Never mind . . . “ said Nick “ . . . it’s not such a problem till you get to Torksey where you need to get one from the lock-keeper there. Till then just keep to the middle in the straight bits and to the inside bit of bends and you should be fine . . . “,
Stage 2 - Keadby Junction to Newark
The distance is 49 miles with 3 wide locks
At a little before noon on the 10th August we moved into the lock and at the stroke of 12 we were let out onto the tidal River Trent, we needed to get a wriggle on as we needed to get to Torksey some 28 miles distant before the tide changed.
These three photos taken just after we left Keadby Lock give an idea of the size of the river at this point.
We could not have picked a better time for our passage, the sun shone and we were cruising the river on a neap tide so with the engine revving at it’s normal cruising speed we were moving over the ground at a rate of 6 miles per hour.
I may have mentioned before that I hate rivers and the trip up the tidal Trent was to my surprise very pleasant, once the initial terror had receded, sadly, although Mark was waxing lyrical about it’s beauty and magnificence both Sue and I started to find it rather boring. On a canal parts are pretty and parts are pretty ‘orrible but all is interesting. As pretty as it is once you have seen one bit of river bank you have seen (almost) all of it.
Although never going out of sight we had wondered why NB ‘Cos We Can had sometimes slowed until it was almost out of sight then quickly catching up only to drop back again. When we reached Torksey we discovered that their engine had been loosing power causing them to drop back until after some minutes it would pick up allowing them to catch up. Kim deduced that the engine was on its slow bits suffering fuel shortage, finding a new fuel filter in the engine bay suggested to him that the promised full engine service before handover had not been carried out and a partially blocked filter was restricting diesel flow, while we spent our evening eating, drinking and having a pleasant time Kim spent his changing filters and servicing his engine.
The Torksey lock-keeper (who had also run out of passage charts) informed us that we did not need to worry about what time we left as the days neap tide was very weak so after photographing each page of Carol and Kim’s charts we set of on our last day on the tidal Trent. It was immediately noticeable that we were punching the tide, our cruising revs the day before were inadequate and near full revs were required to maintain a cruising speed of 4 mph and if slack tide was noon the day before we knew we would be fighting the tide for another three hours.
Once we had settled into the day Carol rang Cromwell Lock to inform them we were on the river and intended passing through the lock. “ . . . What an earth are you doing travelling south on an ebbing tide? I really can’t see you getting here before 4.00pm when we close the lock and go home . . . ”.
As the day progressed it became increasingly clear that Nick was right when he said the difficult bit was the Torksey to Cromwell section, concentration was needed from the helmsman as well as a firm hand on the throttle to keep the boat moving as fast as possible. We made it to Cromwell lock a few minutes before two pm a full two hours before the lock closed and locked through onto the non-tidal Trent although, we were still going against the river flow, but after another couple of hours reached Newark Castle Visitor Moorings from where we had easy access to Newark in general and, in particular, the New King Wah Chinese Restaurant where we enjoyed an excellent meal – thank you Mark for picking up the tab
Stage 3 - Newark to Barrow upon Soar
Well, that was that for the tidal river section, but we could not put away our anchor kit and life jackets yet as, apart from the 6 mile length of the Nottingham and Beeston Canal, this 49 mile 19 lock stage 3 is all river.
The locks on the Nottingham and Beeston Canal came as something of a shock, not only were they wide locks they were also manually operated – thank goodness there were only three of them.
We spent a couple of days in Nottingham City Centre where the canal has been made a place for the “glitterati” to spend their time and money seeing and being seen, we visited a canal side pub that was a converted warehouse with the internal boat loading dock still in place, complete with narrowboat. The effect was great but why, what can only be described as, a cr**py menu? If we wanted to eat burgers we would go to a high street fast food restaurant at a quarter of the price. We had a quick drink and ate on the boat.
The most memorable event was a visit to the caves under the city – The City of Caves. This “guided only” tour is well worth the money we had a great time.
The caves were used for business as well as residential purposes, most particularly a tannery which, as some will know, creates one hell of a stink when operating.
We are now on the home straight, we have completed our journey on the River Trent and are on the River Soar, tomorrow we will drop Mark at his Green Orchid home as we pass on our way to Leicester and beyond, but first we are moored at Kegworth Shallow Lock and have booked a table at a local pub The Anchor Inn, I can’t remember what we had (this is being written some time after the event) but I do remember it was a very good meal at a very reasonable price.
16th August, we dropped Mark home, after arranging to go the The Navigation Inn for dinner, we have been there before and were impressed at the quality (and price) of the food. We stayed close to Marks place for five days partly to have another meal at The Navigation Inn, partly to wait for a stoppage to Lock 41 to clear and mainly to meet up with Sue’s brother Paul and sister in law Carol.
