A disappointing day

Thursday 17^th August; Alwalton to Peterborough

It all started pretty well – quiet, sunny and warm.  One neighbour on the EA mooring left early, and the other, who had been most affected by the noisy kids, would leave later on the first stage towards crossing the Wash on Monday.  Rather him than me!  A boat came up the lock as we were ready to leave, and we were off at about 9 o’clock.  Down we went in glorious weather past the long moorings of Peterborough Yacht Club to Peterborough Embankment where we were keen to get a pump-out and some water.  On the way we passed one of the sculptures in the sculpture trail but it was the only one visible from the river.

Capsized galleon

The services area was occupied so we tied up further back, avoiding the large amounts of goose poo as best we could.  Dave took Meg off to stretch her legs, though annoyingly a large area of the park had an enormous marquee being set up for the forthcoming beer festival and a large area had been fenced off.   He chatted to the boater taking on water, and discovered that the pump-out was free to use and didn't need a token, which was a nice surprise.  The control box, opened by the Abloy key, is located on the outside of a wonderfully painted building, decorated by local artists, which was largely unpolluted by scrawled tags.

Fabulous artwork

When we moved up to the service area, we saw that everything is protected by heavy metal shutters – vandalism is clearly a problem here.

Serious security

The Abloy key soon opened the padlock, and the machine was so efficient that we gave the tank a good rinse (using river water as it was so clear) and did it twice (it was free after all, so why not?).  The water point was nearby so we filled up.  We had wondered about moving up to the Boathouse mooring, which would have been quieter, but it was a sunny day in the holidays – of course it was heaving with hordes of kids having fun and it would have been far too dangerous to try and moor.  So the Embankment it was - at least the weeping willows hid most of the fenced-off area.

You could imagine the white marquee was sky

By the time we had finished faffing about it would have been too late to go inside the cathedral, so we walked up after tea to have a wander round the outside.  It’s huge and very lovely.  Mary Queen of Scots and Katharine of Aragon are buried here.

The west door

St Peter in his niche atop the west side

It was getting too dark for much photography.  We walked back round the edge of Cathedral Square which was noisy with diners, drinkers and teenagers with skateboards – it was making Meg nervous so we didn’t hang about.  When we got back we found two fishermen had set up just behind the stern, but we had no worries about bite alarms beeping while we were trying to sleep - their floats and rod tips were illuminated so they could tell if a fish had taken the bait.  They expected to leave at midnight and promised to be very quiet!

During a somewhat grumpy afternoon we had realised that neither of us has really been enjoying the river, with its long hours of cruising to reach a mooring, and locks that take ages to work through.  It would have been very different if we had been able to come on our last trip – the weather wasn’t so good, it was before the schools broke up and we had more time available.  But - on the very day we had expected to begin - two locks close to Northampton were shut for 2 weeks because a barrage gate had failed, putting paid to our plans.  So we decided to make an early start next morning and take our time going back.

8½ miles 2 locks