Well, so much for us staying at Sawley until Monday! Following a telephone conversation with my Mum last week it transpired that we decided to make a spur of the moment trip to Suffolk!
We hadn’t managed to make it home for my birthday, for obvious reasons or Mum’s birthday either so last Friday off we went.
We had a lovely couple of days with Mum and Dave during which time we went to Reedham and Southwold. We then moved to Halesworth on Monday to visit Peter and stayed in The Angel. Lunchtime my Dad came over to see us which was nice and we had a pleasant evening in Cleone’s with Peter and Tim.
We returned to Sawley on Tuesday ready to start some proper cruising. One last walk to Long Eaton on Wednesday ended our week in Sawley Marina.
Yesterday we left Sawley and travelled 9 miles and 3 locks to Nottingham. It was a lovely mild, calm day yesterday, perfect for a longish trip. We moored near Sainsbury’s ready for doing a big shop this morning.
The first thing I saw this morning when I put up the blind was one magpie. It wouldn’t ordinarily bother me but this is Friday the 13th! More of that later. After doing the aforementioned big shop we set off to travel 2 miles and 2 locks down on to the Trent to moor on the County Hall steps.
All was going well until we got to Meadow lane lock. We moored at the water point and waited for a couple to finish cleaning their cruiser. While we were waiting we noticed 2 red lights on the lock and a CRT barge was also moored there.
Bugger, we thought, have we missed a stoppage? I quickly looked up the stoppages but couldn’t find anything for Meadow Lane. Ken went and looked at the river level although we knew it couldn’t be in flood because there hasn’t been any rain for ages. It would be a pain in the preverbial if we couldn’t lock down on to the Trent because we couldn’t turn round where we were. We were facing a long reverse to the winding hole at the Premier Inn.
In the end I phoned CRT and after some checking it transpired that the Environment Agency had left the lights on by mistake following the last time the Trent went in to Flood, ages ago! So all was well and we continued down on to the river and are now moored on the County Hall steps as planned.
Obviously the close proximity of The Trent Bridge (Wetherspoons) has nothing what ever to do with why we like it here! Especially not today as they have a festering beer festival on and all our favourite beers have been taken off!
So, we will be staying here for a few days now before we go back and start our trip to London via the River Soar.
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