A bit weedy

Wednesday 23^rd August; Ditchford to White Mills

It was cool and cloudy this morning, but that didn’t deter the crew working near the railway bridge – not sure what at, all they seemed to be doing was loading up lorries with a big excavator thingy and driving them away,  just as they were when we moored here over a week ago.  Maybe a bit of smoothing had happened in the meantime.

We were thinking about moving off when the local swan popped round to say hello.  His family was busy elsewhere.

Our first port of call was the water point at Wellingborough embankment.  After we’d filled up we shuffled along a bit to moor and both went to Tesco - two sets of arms would be needed to carry everything back!  By now we were in shorts and t-shirts again.  Once I’d put the fridge stuff away we carried on to Upper Wellingborough lock.  Like Lower Wellingborough, this has two sets of pointing gates, and on this one a small cruiser had come down leaving just a single bottom gate open, so that was a swift and easy bit of work.  Once we had ascended Wollaston lock we spotted the weed the steerer had warned us about – a very thick patch which Dave crept through and managed to tie up on the top landing without trouble as I closed up.  The water on most of the river has been very clear, with just what I would term ‘normal’ river weed, and you can often spot fish getting on with their fishy lives.  Now there was quite a bit of stuff floating about underwater, and Dave had to go into reverse a couple of times.

Clear and often fishy, but weedy

We eventually reached Doddington lock, rather slowly as there was yet more weed accumulating, so once I had tied the bow rope securely, Dave switched off and went down the weed hatch while I lowered the guillotine.  Strangely there was nothing there – it must have dropped off as the prop slowed to a stop.  Hardwater Mill FOTRN mooring looked quite appealing as we passed, but we went on up the next two locks as we wanted to be off the river the next day.  As we cruised between Earls Barton and White Mills locks, we decided this must be the prettiest stretch of the whole river.  Did we remember to take any photos?  Sadly, no.  But we did laugh about the speed limit sign.

7mph - really?  Going into a lock?

It’s repeated below all the locks.  I suppose apart from bridges they are the only solid structures for a sign to be put.  I don’t think we were ever approaching that speed, we only occasionally went above 4 mph.  As we rose up the lock a narrowboat approached below and the crew offered to close up for us, as they were going into the marina.  But as we were mooring between the lock and the marina entrance, just a few yards away, we had a nice chat instead.

Once we were tied up, Dave took Meg for a walk and got some more blackberries.  Then a chap came to collect our mooring fee of £5.  Reasonable enough I suppose, seeing as the marina mows the area occasionally.

6 locks, 6½ miles, about 5 hours cruising.