Off to the Nene day 3

The moorings at Ferry Meadow were as we expected quite quiet with the exception of the resident flock of Canada Geese that were swimming round our stern late at night, luckily they didn’t stay too long before moving off for the night. As  we walked the dog I saw ether a shooting star or a bit of the satellite returning to earth. It streaked through a slightly cloudy sky but seemed to leave a burning trail as it went which was visible for several seconds.

The other bit of excitement was a burning haystack between the lake and the river which required the attendance of the fire brigade, this was still smouldering when we passed this morning

The island just behind the moorings is home to several cormorants and they could be seen  sitting it the rather bare trees catching the morning sun. Some were all black while others had white chests.

With the moorings all full last night one Narrowboat just dropped anchor in the middle of the lake, there would have been plenty of room for him to have breasted up but once he saw 4 Narrowboats there already he didn’t even come close.

We set off at 11 am this morning, just as the cruiser who went through Stanground before us yesterday arrived, so I was able to tell him that there would be a vacant mooring in the next 2 minutes if he just hung on. No soon had we left than the boat that had been the other side of the pontoon pulled out as well. The other two boats were planning to stay for another day.

Once back on the river we turned left, upstream and could see 4 more haystacks, this are made from 3 large bails stood on top of each other and as we passed the farmer was carting them away, lifting a stack of three at a time.

We didn’t meet another boat until we reached Waternewton. The mill must be the prettiest building on the river.As we approached the  lock I spotted a boat coming round the bends as we entered the lock. I am thinking to myself this will save stopping to empty the lock when we are through and raising the guillotine gate. We had just lowered the guillotine gate and Diana was lifting one of the top paddles as the boat arrived. It turned out to be friends of ours on “Dragon Lady” who we bump into about once a year. After spending some time catching up we pushed on to moor for the night on the EA floating pontoon just by Wansford Station the home of the Nene Valley Railway, as we came in to moor the steam train was was just returning back from Peterborough, I took a photo as it crossed the bridge but found I had a tree branch in the shot right in front of the engine, but as it was  a weekend there was a regular service back and forth so I was able to get a better shot of the next one leaving.

As I stood on the pontoon I could see two chaps hard at work cleaning the signals at the end of the platform, they hadn’t been down half an hour and the next train sat in the station ready to depart belching smoke all over the nice clean signal.