A three snake sort of day

Sunday 13th June 2021

Wildlife of the day – Three snakes a swimming.

Despite being moored alongside the railway line to Lincoln, we had a quiet night – weekend timetable, no commuters into Lincoln and no freight after 7pm – lovely!

A cloudless sky greeted us when Graham set off at 8:45, it’s been warm but overcast on recent mornings. If the bit of bank where we pegged in hadn’t been so steep we might have explored Burton Waters marina / housing estate combo last night – it looks huge!

 

We passed through Lincoln and out through the Glory Hole to Stamp End lock. This has a vertical lift top gate and standard mitre bottom gates with hydraulic paddle gear. The CaRT instructions for operating the electric gate confused Brenda so she steered Jannock through whilst Graham worked the lock – a good job to because the bottom gates were very heavy and she would have struggled to get it open.

The River Witham is wide and slow with few other boats moving on this wonderful Sunday. We did meet paddleboarders and canoeists and get lots of waves from cyclists and walkers going along the path alongside which used to be a railway line – now SUSTrans controlled.

We passed Jannock’s limit of navigation when we came down here in 2005, Bardney moorings, and continued on through Bardney lock which was a standard mitre lock with windlasses attached to work the paddles.

 

We passed the Golden Syrup works at Bardney immediately after negotiating our way through all the swimmers and paddlers congregated at Bardney bridge. On down past Kirkstead where more swimmers and paddlers were enjoying the water on this very hot day.

We spotted three snakes swimming in the river in total, two had light coloured marks on their heads whilst the third was plain. We had to deploy the parasol on Jannock’s cruiser stern for health and safety reasons – no nice big shady trees to stop under on the Witham unlike the canal system.

We continued down to Langrick Bridge where there was one space left on the visitor mooring pontoon, albeit absolutely clogged with weed – so much that it wrapped itself around the prop and shaft and caused Jannock’s engine to create lots of black smoke whilst not moving us forward very well. Graham pulled the boat in using the centre rope and then had to attack the weeds using the serrated bread knife he keeps on the weed hatch lid – just in case.

 

G&B