What a relief!

Relief Channel, that is. Or the Great Ouse Relief Channel to give it its full name (as far as I know). We entered the lock after breakfast; I made the mistake of trying to shut one of the "doors" (gates) manually. The doors have balance beams and grab handles so I thought I would have to close them myself. Wrong. They are electrically controlled, as are the "slackers" (paddles) from the boxes by the lockside.

Even electro-hydraulically operated as the slackers were, the lock took a very long time to empty: perhaps 20 minutes.

And then we were on the wide, deep, straight relief channel.

Our destination was Downham Market, but for extra interest we went as far as we could towards King's Lynn. We turned when we got to the no entry signs at Abbey Farm Bridge.

I would have missed the signs, but Jan drew my attention to them.

We stopped for water at Wiggenhall St. Mary Magdalen (a contender for the longest English place name?) and would have explored the village had the mooring pontoon not been invaded by 29 children (Jan counted them). They were there for the swimming (of course), jumping off the pontoon and the bridge. One had suggested that we wouldn't have been in their way as they would have jumped off the boat, but we thought it better to move on.

We stopped at the Downham Market mooring to walk in to the town (Morrisons and Tesco). The moorings on the Relief Channel are excellent. All are floating pontoons, all have a water point and plenty of bollards.

Having bought provisions we returned to the boat and made our way back to Denver. The only other boats we saw on the Relief Channel were at Downham Market: two appeared to be long term moorers; the only other one was a visitor like us.

As we set off there was a jet ski towing an inflatable with a passenger behind us.

Very soon they zoomed past us, crossed in front and zoomed back again. They were having a great time.

Back at the Relief Channel Lock we found it mysteriously full, meaning we had to turn it before ascending to the Great Ouse. After tying up we got the barbecue out - the sun immediately went behind a cloud and didn't come out again.

On to the River Wissey tomorrow.