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Tuesday 1 November 2011

Littleport 1Nov 2011 Day 4

DSCF7018Last night was not good,  but not as bad as I expected, but the traffic really picked up first thing this morning.

9-30 this morning I pulled the front pin and walked to the stern to take that one as well, it was at that point I saw someone walking towards me, thinking it was someone of authority I walked to meet them only to find it was a friend of mine who moors his Wilderness boat at the caravan site. We discussed the possibilities of doing the river right up to Oxborough Ferry at a later date when there is a bit more water in the river. We finally pushed off at twenty to ten.

DSCF7025In the village of Stoke ferry we passed under a steel road bridge, on the down side there is a plaque saying it was rebuilt by Norfolk Council in 1899 and the surveyors name was a Mr. Heslop.

DSCF7028As we passed Stoke Ferry sluice I spotted Ivan catching us up in his Wilderness, it wouldn’t be long before he was to overtake us. Well with a 10hp outboard engine he has a better power to weight ratio than us.

DSCF7012As you travel along this river it is easy to think you are on the Norfolk Broads except for two things, the lack of other boats and the strong smell of onions you get as you pass the onion fields.

DSCF6997We passed a field of sheep that were doing there best to keep up with a nautical theme by have red and green rub marks on their backs, I am not sure of the significance of the blue ones.

I should add that while we were doing this river this morning it was raining from time to time even though the chap on radio 4 said it was going to be the best day of the week, I think he must have stayed in bed on Sunday when it was lovely.

DSCF7036Once back on the Ouse we turned upstream and the weather did improve a bit, we met 4 boats on this stretch which was bit of a surprise. The Air force were playing again just like yesterday making lots of noise, Quite often you could not see them at all and other times they were quite low but not duck down low.

At Brandon Creak we turned down left down The Little Ouse as I wanted to see where the floating dry dock was, its about half a mile down from the junction on the left hand side at Bank Farm. They also sell diesel at 90p lt at the moment as well as controlling over half a mile of moorings. We just managed to wind where one of the online moorings was vacant, I don’t think you would get a 60 footer round here. We were going to carry on to Brandon but as its 14 miles and it had already turned 2 pm we would not have made it before dark and we don’t know of any recognised moorings on the way.

Back at The Ship we again turned left and carried on to Littleport for the night mooring opposite The Swan, last time we were here it was called The Black Horse and we stopped for Sunday lunch, we will see what it is like this evening.

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