The Tidal Trent

Thursday 17th June 2021

After quite a noisy night moored between a main road and a railway we were not looking forward to our 12:30 passage out of Torksey lock onto the tidal Trent as we awoke to rain and drizzle. It was a shame as we had been spoilt with two weeks of glorious weather so far. It couldn’t have been better if we’d been boating in the South of France – take that Covid!

We held off departure until 9:45 for our run from Saxilby to Torksey and then Graham set off just as the wet weather ceased – good timing! When we arrived at the lock there were two narrowboats and a small cruiser were already waiting. The two narrowboats breasted up to allow us to moor just as a gust of wind blew Jannock’s stern out. We were then joined by another narrowboat who breasted up to us with a hefty clout amidships.

 

The crew of the small cruiser, or ‘plastic’ as he called it, were concerned about sharing a lock with big steel boats and then looked amazed when the lock keeper told him that they would be sharing the lock with all four of us. We assured them that narrowboaters are mostly experienced, there’s plenty of room,you’ll be fine, we’ll look after you. We even convinced them that staying with the narrowboats rather than rushing off alone would be safer should something happen.

The gates opened and we went in, two by two with them tucked in at the back. All ropes secured we descended past all the teapots sat on the centre gate beams and down to river  level. Ropes were loosed as the bottom gates opened but then one gate would not open fully due to having an obstacle trapped behind it so lots of reversing to allow the front two boats out before we all followed on in single file.

 

The trip to Cromwell lock took about 3.25 hours and once through we found that the visitor pontoon was full. The first two narrowboats were stopping on the lock waiting wall and we decided to continue on and stop at the Muskam Ferry pontoon. The other narrowboat and the cruiser also decided to do the same which made mooring difficult with a change of plan part way through the exercise. This can be seen at the end of the time lapse video for this trip at https://youtu.be/NdU1nCOsIR0

When we had all moored up we found that the cruiser crew had just learnt that their cat had died at home so plans were made to meet up for a Covid safe natter in the pub later swapping tales of the idiocies of life and talking of boats and journeys. We all plan to leave at 9am tomorrow morning. It was nice to see that the Grammer Police had made it into the Gents toilet before Graham

 

G&B