New mooring restrictions on Welford Arm

I seem to have somehow got a day behind with these blog posts. I blame the poor signals at Crick.

We moved on from Crick after a very pleasant few days there and headed for Welford. Our intention was to leave the boat there for a while so we could come home for lawn mowing etc. This plan was thwarted, as I shall explain later.

Travelling north from Crick, then, we passed under the A14 bridge. Here a boat had tied up with its mooring ropes across the towpath at perfect tripping height.

Near Welford Junction we saw gliders being given aeroplane tows.

At Welford Lock our first surprise was to find ourselves third in the queue.

Our second surprise was to find that the 14 day moorings have been reduced to two days. This was done, according to CRT, in advance of the celebrations a couple of weeks ago marking the 50th anniversary of the Welford Arm's re-opening. The CRT man I spoke to, who owned up to being the person who had actually put up the new mooring restriction signs, was unable to say whether the restrictions - applying from April to September - were permanent, but he thought it was likely. The signs look permanent enough (sorry, no photo).

There is, in fact, room for two 60' boats immediately above the lock landing, just before the first mooring restriction sign. But that's not much, and it's a fair walk from there to the pub and village.

Given that wherever we moored within reach of the end of the arm we would be on a two day mooring, we nabbed the single space on the offside immediately beyond the last winding hole. The Mikron Theatre's boat Tyseley was one of the two at the very end; I bet that will be there for at least another week as they are putting on a show on 5th (I think) June. Again, apologies for the paucity of photos.

Having tied up and had lunch I cycled back to Crick to get the car.