WEED!

We were getting on so well, the Twenty Foot River and us. We'd successfully negotiated one of the lowest bridges on the Middle Levels. Nothing disturbed us at our wild mooring last night. We easily got back into the centre channel this morning … and then came the weed.

There was no escaping it. The vile stuff spread from one bank to the other and clogged the prop verty quickly. In the worst areas I was down the weed hatch every few yards. Progress, as can be imagined, was almost non-existent.

This is our lunch 'mooring': stuck in the middle of the waterway.

There was so much weed coming out of the hatch that I knew I was actually pulling it off the bottom of the river.

I had to resort to punting with the cabin shaft to try to reach some clearer water - it's not easy punting a narrowboat.

Eventually the visits down the weed hatch became less frequent and we reached the junction with the Old River Nene. I had originally wanted to explore down to Benwick and Ramsey, but our experience with the weed rather put us off that idea. We turned left towards Upwell and Outwell instead. Funnily enough, we hadn't seen a single boat since joining the Twenty Foot nearly 24 hours earlier. Even the outer reaches of the BCN have more boats.

The route to Three Holes via Popham's Eau looked clear, wide and inviting, but we chickened out and turned left here too. The signs erected by the Middle Level Commissioners have writing that's far too small for me to read.

Before getting to Marmont Priory Lock we rang the number as instructed and left a message. No-one got back to us. At the lock itself we rang the bell, again as requested, and worked ourselves through in the normal manner. Nothing seemed to require the attentions of a lockie, who didn't materialise.

Here's something I hadn't come across before: a receptacle for tips for the lock keeper.

Needless to say, I didn't add to the coins in the tin.

Very soon we arrived in Upwell and found ourselves in our home county of Norfolk.

We tied up on the first public mooring, March Bank, I think it was called, but I then cycled up to the Church Bridge mooring and saw that we would fit there, so I moved the boat up.

We visited our friend Sally in Outwell after tea.