Pillings to Willington

Thursday 26th August and we’re still at Pillings Lock Marina due to bad weather. The problem is that, with my swollen feet, no doubt due to the painkillers I’m taking, I am unable to wear my outdoor shoes. Instead I am limited to my house slippers and my, rather soft and certainly not waterproof, indoor/outdoor shoes.

We took the car over to Mercia this morning and enjoyed a cup of coffee with Marian and Brian, after which Brian brought us back to this place. The intention was that we would first have a spot of lunch and then make our way to Zouch or Kegworth Deep Lock. But, what with the wind springing up and the rain continuing to rain, we have now put the start of this trip off until tomorrow morning. We certainly don’t want a repeat of our enforced stay of 2007.

Tomorrow morning though, even if it is raining, we will leave here early so as to ensure meeting up with Marian and Brian in time for Marian’s birthday. We have even bought her a cake and Happy Birthday candles. Along with a couple of presents, of course, well, it would be rude not to.

Hopefully it won’t take more than two or three days to get to our moorings at Mercia Marina, which should see us there for Bank Holiday Monday. We’re really looking forward to our new, temporary home and therefore away from the bad feeling that seems to abound here at Pillings Lock Marina.

Incidentally, just in case anybody reading this, or my previous postings, thinks I have been spouting off sour grapes, we are not the only boaters that the MD has taken a disliking to. No doubt, after his accusations about an ex staff member, the word has flashed through the grapevine, because we have become aware of at least two more people making visits to Mercia and know of one other couple who were so incensed by his attitude, that they moved on to Yelvertoft a few weeks ago..

O.K. Enough said about the past let’s concentrate on the future and a winter at Mercia Marina. As I mentioned in an earlier posting, there are many advantages at Mercia over Pillings, not least the 10% discount berth-holders enjoy in some of the local shops and a pub. The pub in question, I do believe, is the Green Dragon and is the one we have used when we’ve moored up there on our travels. The 10% discount is only on food, but that’s OK by us because, as you all know, we do enjoy our pub-grub.

Willington, as you would expect from any reasonably sized village, also boasts a Social Club/Village Hall and, from what Marian tells us, they hold regular auctions there. Nothing of high end value you understand, more like a bring-and-buy is how she described it. So, we’re quite looking forward to paying that a visit.

As you can imagine, after 11 months moored up in one place, simply whilst I waited for my knees to be operated on, we’ve been going a little stir crazy and are getting quite excited about moving on. We’ll soon be sitting at the dinette and going through our Nicholson Guides, working out what we’re going do with ourselves next summer. It’s a toss-up between covering stretches of water that I was unable to explore last year and planning something new that we can both explore and enjoy. The Kennett and Avon would be a good bet, but we’ll have to wait and see.

As for my knees, they are getting stronger in leaps and bounds, if you’ll pardon the pun. I even managed a couple of short walks without the crutches, and that’s after only four weeks. I am hoping that, by the time I return to Glenfilds for my next physio session in two weeks time, I’ll be able to drive myself there. Sadly my long suffering wife is not happy having to drive, but she’s quite happy to do so if I’ve had a few Guinnesses. I think the 40 minutes or so that it took us to drive to Mercia this morning, was a bit of a strain for her. It is, after all, quite some time since she has driven regularly to and from work and such. Have no fear Wifey, I’ll be coming to the rescue soon!!

How about that then, we haven’t even left Pillings and I’ve already managed three pages of this first Willington blog.

Friday 27th August and, yet again, it’s been raining for most of the night. However, true to their word, the forecasters have given us a dry start to the day. It’s now 05.30 and Sheila and I are planning to leave here at 07.00 or thereabouts.

Brian telephoned at about 6.30 last night and told me they had reached Shardlow so, if we can make it to Kegworth Deep Lock – that’s the one before the lock that we spent 10 days inside in 2007 – then everything will have worked out just fine. After a little bit of a celebration for Marian and an overnight stay, we can make our way to Mercia Marina. Whoopee!!

All this is dependent upon the forecasters getting it right for today of course, but whatever happens we are not spending another night in this place. The feeling between us and Paul, or so we’ve heard through the grapevine, is that he can’t wait to see us go any more than we can wait to leave. T least we all agree on something.

Saturday 28th August and we have spent a very pleasant evening here at Sawley.
We left Pillings Lock Marina just after 7 am yesterday and arrived here just after 1 pm, which is a lot longer than we would normally spend cruising. But, since Brian and Marian made it from Willington to Shardlow on Thursday; we didn’t travel at all that day; we thought we give them a rest.

After quite a bit of rain Wednesday and Thursday, as expected, the river Soar was a little high, but not too high to present a problem. Well, not until we arrived at Kegworth Deep Lock where we discovered, after actually going through the lock, that the warning signs were in the Red.

We had been fortunate enough to meet up with another couple at Bishop’s Meadow lock, where the traffic light also showed red but, having checked the flow from the river below the lock, we decided it was safe to go on.

The next lock, Zouch, was showing in the amber, which means proceed with caution, which we were happy to do and carried on with no problems at all.

When we passed through Kegwort Deep we noticed, as we looked back towards the lock, that the warning sign was well into the red. We also spotted the BW van up to our right with two of their staff, probably checking the state of the river. We were a bit annoyed at this as we travelled towards Kegworth Flood Lock, because the going was a bit hairy to say the least. Luckily it is only a short run between these locks and we made it without incident.

On arriving at Kegworth Flood we saw that the gates were closed. This usually means the river is high, but this lock has no warning signs, so we telephoned BW to ask if it was safe to go on. We were advised to proceed with caution, meaning the water was high but not threatening.
Eventually, after another couple of locks, we arrived at Sawley and said goodbye to our travelling companions. They were a pretty friendly couple who had a rather longer boat than ours that they were working on. He was hoping to eventually live aboard the boat, but we’re not too sure she had the same idea.

They had two dogs, a Poodle and a Westie which she would take off the boat and tie to a post at ever lock we came to. Eventually even her partner was getting a bit fed up with this practice because, when we came to the final lock before the Trent, he had an awful job getting her and the dogs back on the boat.

When we came out of the lock at Sawley Sheila walked ahead to find a mooring spot close to Brian’s boat whilst I slowly cruised along behind. At one point I passed another whose lady occupant was leaning out of her side hatch. When I asked if she was ok she replied, “No, I’m not ok” and when I asked why she said, “Because we want to get on to the Soar but it’s closed due to flooding” Weren’t we the lucky ones?

Today we will leave a little later than yesterday because we all need a rest. After six hours on my feet and moving about yesterday, my knees were not happy with me and showed it last night. But, most surprisingly, after spending only a couple of hours in the armchair, the rest of the night I managed to stay in bed. Things are looking up methinks.

This morning we will probably wait until Sheila and Marian have popped across to the marina and bought the paper and whatever else we need then we’ll be on our way. I have no idea where we’ll stop, but Brian is in favour of somewhere with a pub. Sadly, apart from Shardlow, which is only a couple of miles away, I don’t think there is anywhere until we’re almost at Mercia, so I think we’ll probably moor up miles from nowhere and enjoy a few cans. Although I invited them to come into Willington with us on Sunday for a drink, it seems Brian will be working. So, whatever happens, we need to be at the marina on Sunday morning at the latest. No problem, the weather looks set fair and we only have about 12 miles to go, I think!

Wow, six pages already, I’ll have to post this on Monday, the first of many from Mercia.

My habit when cruising, as you all know, is to send you all a text message telling you where we are. Well, some time ago on one of my visits to Harlow, my dear brother persuaded me to upgrade my mobile. I was quite happy with the snap-shut thingy I had before, but I allowed him to talk me into this wretched Samsung thing, which has all the bells and whistles people have come to expect these days.

Those bells and whistles include the ability to scroll through your list of contacts by touch. I find this to be not so easy because, each time I attempt to do so, I always manage to touch a contact too hard, and end up looking at their info. This system is very much like the touch pad on the laptop, I can’t get on with that thing either and have to use a mouse. Yesterday therefore, after several attempts to send you all a text, I eventually gave up and have resorted to the blog.

Sunday 29th August

Yesterdays cruising started out real well, with sunny skies and a light breeze. This situation didn’t last long then along came the stronger wind and cloudy skies. We had hoped to get as far as the lock at Weston and intended to moor up just past it. We took the lead coming out of the lock and immediately started looking for somewhere to stay for the rest of the day and overnight.
This didn’t take long but, when we pulled in and started tying up the boat, along came Brian and Marian who found that it was too shallow for their ‘Brimar’ to moor up. Their boat has about an extra four inches of draft compared to ‘Shiralee’ and so we had to untie and carry on, while Marian walked on with their pole looking for somewhere to stop.

For a while we kept pace with her and, every so often she would dip the pole in, hopefully deep enough to reach the pre-se marker, but all to no avail. Eventually we upped the speed and carried on to Swarkestone Lock and stopped there. Just a few minutes later they joined us and, thankfully, found that the water was deep enough and here we stayed.

Once again then, through nobody’s fault really, I had to endure a longer day of being on my feet than I would have liked. For the rest of the day and right up to bedtime, I suffered agonies in my knees, which had become quite swollen by now, and my calf muscles.

Marian is a very generous lady, she’s forever baking cakes and bread and passing them around to fellow boaters. Although she did us a favour yesterday and bought us a loaf whilst we were still cruising towards Sawley, she has promised to bake us a loaf today sometime. So, around about teatime, just as Sheila was about half way into cooking our meal, along comes Brian asking if we would like to join them in a roast dinner. Daft bugger, I’d already told him we were going to enjoy one of our favourite snacks, sausages and cheesy chips. Ah well, another time perhaps.

When we moored up her, a place that is quite obviously a proper mooring spot, we found a couple of folks fishing. Well, there was plenty of room for us to moor up, so live and let live I say. Around the same time as Wifey was cooking, along came one of these fellows carrying a bag that turned out to be full of flat-cap mushrooms. The man meant well in offering us some, but they were certainly past their sell by date. Not to upset him I agreed to take some and thanked him, but there is no way we’ll use them. Nice gesture though!

Today has dawned with plenty of heavy cloud and just a light breeze. We don’t have very far to go, about five miles and just two locks so, assuming Lord and Lady Enticott get up early enough, we should be in Mercia Marina well before lunchtime and a pub drink to celebrate our escape from Pillings Lock Marina.

Now, as we already have eight pages, I’m going to make this a one off of our journey to Mercia and wish you all a most enjoyable Bank Holiday Weekend.

Cheers from Dave, Sheila and Rusty