Nottingham to London day 7

It was a glorious day yesterday! We started off for the 5 final locks (of the restriction) in the morning and discovered we had jostled in between a couple of boats working through all the locks together. So we let them head through and settled a while at the mooring point for the locks, to wait for another boat.

I had time to bake a loaf of bread for lunch whilst we waited.


Leigh and Delia took a stroll down the towpath to explore.


I decided to walk ahead and see if there were any boats on the way down to us. Fortunately there were some walkers passing by and they had seen some boats coming our way. I knew that this would leave the locks in our favour and we could start the move up shortly.

Once the two boats came through the lock, we went in alone as still no single boats had arrived. We waited for boats coming down before we proceeded thorugh the rest of the locks.


Whilst I was waiting at the tiller inside one lock, I looked down at the reeds floating on the surface and spotted this little thing...


We've learnt a lot about locks during this stretch.


When going alone in double locks there is a knack to filling up the lock to stop the boat flying across to the other side and hitting the wall. Also, I now know how best to open the gates without straining.


The real secret is going slow.

There was a large field of 'Delia's' on our route today...


We moored up at bridge... so that we could walk into the village of Fleckney to pick up some supplies.

We set off again and I did the first tunnel of the journey.


Saddington Tunnel is 800m long and took about 10 minutes to travel.


This being my first tunnel I have navigated through, I realised the level of concentration required to keep to the centre - quite a difficult task when it was so dark. About half way through I realised I still had my sunglasses on! What a wally!

Leigh took some beautiful photographs from the bow, under the cratch cover...



We had reached a bridge before Debdale Wharf marina where we need to use the facilities and pump out. As it was after 5pm it made sense to moor for the night so we could go in there tomorrow.

The early evening sun shone across canal and flooded the boat. Leigh and I did a few jobs outside...


including rooting for potatoes as the tops were falling apart from all the bashing about in locks!



We ended up with a lovely bowl full!