Barrow On Soar To Gunthorpe.





A digest of the last week.







I am trying to catch up today as I have got so far behind recently. All I have been doing after a days cruising is fall into bed.

We left Barrow on Sunday chugging off into a glorious day,

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arriving at the Loughborough basin in the afternoon. That reflection in the water is a huge block of student accommodation. Also the soppy design of the pontoon here means you can only get one boat alongside. There is no way in the world you can squeeze into that gap.

We should have turned around there and then!!! a wonderful thing is hindsight.

Students are an extremely noisy breed especially on their way to and from the local pubs and clubs.

They seem to have a total inability to talk at a normal level once out on the street, everything must be yelled, shouted, hollered and even sung to each other.

They come back home in waves up until about half one in the morning, then you get a break until the hardcore screamers come out of the clubs at three. These are the ones who try to let your boat go but are so drunk they cant function properly. They can scarper though when you put the light on them.

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Leaving the basin as soon as I could stay out of bed for more than ten minutes at a time we headed of to a little place called Zouch where we managed an unbroken nights sleep. The lights were green meaning the river is open, if red, a long wait is possible.

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Zouch was in the wake come Thursday morning and we were heading for Nottingham.

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You are not going to Nottingham? asked a man sunning himself on a bench at this lock.

That's the plan, says I.

Watch where you moor around there then, vandals everywhere.

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Inwardly rolling my eyes I am thinking not another piece of good advice. If we listened to half of this advice we would not move the boat again for fear of trouble.

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This lock speaks volumes about what the place is like, it has windlasses welded to the paddles meaning that any passer by can operate the lock with ease.

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Most areas approaching cities have anti vandal mechanisms fitted to the lock gear which have to be opened with special keys.

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Its now Friday and we are moored up behind a gigantic "Gin Palace" at Gunthorpe lock.

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The boat is enormous, they have to climb down a ladder just to get off the thing.

Having just had their afternoon drinkies session on one of the rear decks, they lowered the tender from its davits and took it for a blast up and down the waterway.

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It sure is a different world here on the rivers!!

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Until next time...............................

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