This morning got off to a slow start. As it was nearly 9 am before we were ready to leave we decided not to operate the lock ourselves but waited for the volunteer lock keeper to turn up. She was a bit late and then there was a problem with one of the top sluices.
This wouldn’t have made any difference to us if we had gone earlier because we were going down but by the time the lockie appeared some CRT blokes had isolated the electricity on the top gates so they could work on the sluice.
There was about a 30 min delay before they turned the electricity back on and we could go down the lock. After this it was plain sailing to Newark where, as luck would have it, the lock was ready for us when we arrived.
We turned round just past the lock and moored on the wall opposite the castle. We decided not to go and see if there was any room on the pontoon moorings further down because there invariably isn’t.
Once we had moored up we went into town for the usual and sat outside the Sir John Arderne where we met a very interesting Italian chap called Guido and spent a very pleasant time chatting about various things.
Ken isn’t allowed to fish here so he is sitting indoors moaning about what crap there is on the tv!
We are going to stay here tomorrow.
