How far can you go on the Lark?

Today was the day for exploring the River Lark. The first attraction was the small village of Prickwillow with its Drainage Engine Museum. Unfortunately, this not being a Saturday, Sunday, Monday or Tuesday the museum was shut. I managed to get a photo through the window, though.

The museum wasn't the only building shut here: the flint church appears to be closed for good.

At lunchtime we were nowhere near anywhere "proper" to moor, so we loosely tied up to a couple of old posts we managed to get ropes round. In the middle of lunch the only boat that came by happened to be the Great Ouse river patrol boat. We just waved and carried on eating. They waved back and carried on down the river.

The next excitement was … at last … a lock! Our last self-operated lock was Marmont Priory Lock on the Middle Levels last week. The photo of us descending the lock on the way back is better than my ascending one, so here it is out of sequence.

Above the lock it was like a completely different waterway. Gone were the high banks and wide, clear water. Now the land was hardly any higher than the water, there was more weed and the river was much narrower.

At West Row there is a road bridge just beyond a pub (Jude's Ferry?). The navigation guides seem to stop describing the river at this point, so we assumed that it was the end of navigation.

But there's nothing to stop you continuing under the bridge … except, perhaps, the knowledge that you've probably just passed the last opportunity to wind.

So we reversed and winded opposite the pub's moorings. Our 55' boat only just managed to get round, with the nose hard against the bank and the stern scraping against the wooden staging. There is an inlet 100' further downstream which would probably have done had we been unsuccessful. As we reversed under the bridge I spotted a sign in the bushes saying "End of Environment Agency navigation". I wonder how much further we could have got, given that the river continues to Mildenhall (at least). But we had a dinner date back in Littleport so we couldn't hang around.

Speaking of Mildenhall, we saw several planes which probably had just taken off from that airbase. This was a very strange-looking craft ...

… with two propellers which seemed to rotate quite slowly.

There were lots of these too (unless it was the same one doing circuits). Its tail fin is marking the 100th anniversary of the RAF.

My final photo for this post is yet another one of the pylons. I managed to snap this as they all lined up - quite tricky to do at 4mph while steering.

At the Littleport moorings opposite the Swan on the River pub we saw that there was space for us behind another narrowboat - which happened to be Paws 4 Thought and our friends Tony and Pat. They knew we were dashing out so we exchanged quick greetings before we walked to the vicarage for a lovely meal with Howard and Joanna.

Ely tomorrow … and a rendezvous.