Saturday 30 August 2014

The persistence of duckweed, and up, down and up Newark Nether Lock

Just a quick update as I've been distracted by Canal World Discussion Forums - and I can't believe the time!

We're now moored at Newark, having had a smooth passage up the rest of the tideway.

I got a big surprise before setting off, though.

After ploughing through acres of duckweed on the Stainforth and Keadby Canal on Thursday I quite expected to see the stuff in the weedhatch, and this is what it looked like.

This morning I lifted the weedhatch - and found it was still there!

This was after miles of fast running between Keadby and Torksey. How could anything stay in there for so long?

I cleared out as much as I could by scooping it with my hand, then I used a cloth to "mop up" most of the rest.

The cruise up to Cromwell Lock was uneventful, and less windy than yesterday. The flood tide wasn't as strong, and we averaged only 4.8 mph. In fact, the tidal bit below Cromwell Lock felt no different from the non-tidal bit above.

I took fewer photos; this one needs a caption.

Soon we were approaching Newark Nether lock, the only other lock we were to do today.

There were more boats around; at Cromwell Lock there were three narrowboats, one widebeam and a cruiser; at Nether Lock we'd lost the widebeam and the cruiser but gained another narrowboat. The lockkeeper was being very gentle - it took ages for the lock to fill. Even when he raised the sluices a bit more to produce more bumpy stuff than any of the tidal waters we were on.

Nicholson's suggests that there's a water point below the lock. In fact it's on the lock side, so we were invited to water up still attached to the cables in the lock wall while the lock emptied and filled again. Interesting!

And this is where we tied up. The place looked busy, so we grabbed the first space we came to.

By the time we'd got ourselves settled, and bought some supplies from Aldi, we'd left it too late to move to the nicer moorings opposite the castle.

We had a good curry at Asha.

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