Fenland Tour 2001 Page 2

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The Tuesday Night Club on Tour

Tour 2001

Fenland Tour Summer 2001

2- Nottingham to Newark - Nottingham Canal and River Trent.

Friday 29th June 2001

Neil and Peter B got up at 07.45. Neil felt extravagant / smelly so had a shower! Neil eventually banged on the Chapman's boat at 08.00, as agreed the night before. They were not that ready, so declined the Sainsbury's £1.99 coffee shop breaky. Neil and Peter were somewhat flummoxed by auto serve caffetiere of coffee dispenser, but the staff soon cleared up the mess! It was a superior £1.99 breaky to Tesco's Bulls Bridge, highly recommended, only complaint - not enough free newspapers! Eventually we shoved off at 09.20. We stopped just below Castle Lock, so JC could leg it into town to get some more slide films. John suggested that we should use VHF on channel 73 for personal chat and dual watch on 74, as John likes chatting to the lockies - not about anything navigational - he just likes using VHF!
Much more redevelopment was noticed below Castle Lock, all traces of Great Central viaduct had been removed. A couple of bridges after the sharp corner, there is another blind bridge. JC just slipped through this, then warned Neil that a nb coming the other way that will beat him to it. VHF does have its uses! Other nb captain was amazed that Neil stopped! - so he lets us though. At 10.20 we passed out of Meadow Lane Lock and back onto the River Trent.
We were warned of a big shoal left over from floods below Holme Lock, to east bank. Yellow buoys had been deployed, the flow from weir made this fun to avoid! There seemed to be a relief locky on at Stoke Bardolph and he starts chatting avidly to JC. Neil was holding Earnest on centre rope, but after a while has to tie on as he just cannot hold the boat against the flow of water from the fully open top gate paddles!!!. Neil gave a few throat clearing noises and eventually the locky susses what was wrong and legged it back up into his cabin! Profuse apologies then ensued. It was a slow pootle along the river, JC retired below after having taught Lesley to steer and left Pat and Lesley to it!
At Hazelford Lock we had to take it careful below, as two lots of BW dredgers were clearing shoals. This was with one less large hopper barge – as it had gone over the weir and was wedged sideways against the footbridge pier (dunno how it did not remove this!!) We passed Newark Marina, Earnest's launch place at 15.50. There was a red light at Newark Town Lock, but no locky, so JC started to do it with BW key - he rather surprised as the locky got back to cabin with out JC seeing him and takes control, hid and had some fun with JC!!!!
The locky at Hazelford Lock had advised us to go past the “Castle” and the new VM's below the bridge and go into the new BW Kings Marina, where there are some 48 hr VM's. This we did and moored up on water connected pontoons, in BW key lock-in marina. While filling with water Pat's offers us cup of tea.....but John's gas had run out, also empty spare. John got talking to the owner of “Elsa B” - 49ft rear cabined Sagar Dutch barge, and as is John's charm the guy offers to give John a lift to the marina! Neil said that John could borrow Neil's spare gas cylinder to save a trip.
Jeff the owner of Elsa B invited us all aboard, when he finds out that we are TNC members (Tidal Narrowboaters Club) He introduced us to Fred, his narrowboating mate, whose 55ft cruiser sterned, none cratched nb is beside “Elsa B”. This is strangley called “Tourin Moorin”………leftover from the last owner – a Mr Tourin! They both moor at Hedon Brough (Haven), which is to the EAST of HULL!!! Lots of salty talk ensued and we find out that Jeff is taking a mate's Dutch Barge out of Boston, the 2 hours before HW locking, just before the 2 hours after HW slot that we had booked!!! “Elsa B” is really superb and Neil got a feel for the wheel house and ships wheel. Jeff said that he has not been to impressed with the wave riding capabilities of his boat - and thinks that Fred's old nb is just as good!!!!.........Neil still offered a quick swap with Earnest.....perhaps he should have got a 57ft version?
Jeff is somewhat pissed of with Sagar as his boat was a SELF FIT OUT (they did machine the wood for him) and not a fitted Sagar boat as advised in the July 2001 Canal and Riverboat write up about his boat. He also thought that he went over the top with the engine - 130HP Sabre Perkins. He said that a friends similar Sagar boat with a 50HP Beta, that they took across to Calais, was adequate. That evening Ray and Sheila from R&D came out in Sheila's MPV to take us ALL out to the Muskam Ferry pub, on the River Trent at North Muskam. Ray told the story of a nutty customer that is having a twin engined nb built!!!..and more of his old boat building stories emerged.

Castle Lock, Nottingham. Nottingham Canal.