Retirement with No Problem

Today – Wissey Bridge to Salters Lock, Rivers Wissey, Gt Ouse and Middle Levels
Bank Holiday Weekend – Moored Nr Wissey Bridge, River Wissey

Wonderful weekend spent on the quiet River Wissey, with plenty of time for walking and fishing.  Vic was busy with an oil change, trying to find an annoying rattle in the engine bay, redoing the floor as it had expanded and needed a bit off the end and making a new duck board for the roof to take the coal!  I just lazed about!

Oh coal!  Well I ordered some for this morning to be delivered to Denver along with a Tesco order as I didn’t know how long we were going to be there due to the problems at Denver Lock with silting..

Anyway, I was told that it would come in bags, they knew they were delivering to a narrowboat.  They turned up this afternoon with bags of 50 kilos that one would tip into a coal bunker!!  He went away with the bags not very happy at all that No Problem did not have a coal bunker to put in the 5 bags that I had ordered in to!!

Never mind, I will order some for Peterborough tomorrow now that we have made it from Denver to the Middle Levels.  It sure is a bit of a problem at the moment, you can see from the pic above, that the main channel is being dredged by EA, and they have been at it for a week.  The lock out into this tidal bit is on the right of the pic, and there is no way you can go straight down that channel where the dredging crane is working, you have to come out of the lock and turn left with that almighty sand bank on your right hand side, round that and then on down the tide.

Those coming from the Middle Levels to the Ouse also have to come into the lock that way.. here is one at a terrible angle to the lock, but he did it very gently and managed to get in with very little scuffing..

You can see the water is higher now, although not nearly high enough to be totally out of trouble with the short journey.. This is the boat that went down before us getting into a bit of bother trying to turn sharp left out of the lock…

The lock he came out of is on the right of the pic, so you can see how difficult it is to get round that sandbank, he needs to pass that on his right!  I was glad I watch him, gave me more of an idea of getting NP into the right position.. The lockie gave us the choice of going tonight, saying that it was on our heads if we did, the risk of grounding said he was small.  So I thought I would have an adrenalin run, and by 7.15pm NP was safely tied up on the Middle Levels.

I’m pleased that’s over to be honest.. I was a bit worried about it, not so much the bit out of Denver, but to get into Salters Lock on the Middle Levels the dog leg needs to be judged to perfection or the boat gets rammed into the wall… We will be in Peterborough on Thursday I think.. we are not keen on the Middle Levels..