Friday 1 June 2012

Well its the start of another month and we set off from our very peaceful mooring at about 10 am. in very pleasant sunshine, looking towards Ely was a different story with heavy clouds.

Only a government department could put a 4 mph. speed check area where you check that you are not doing MORE than 4 mph by the time it takes to pass two markers in the narrowest section of the river opposite long term moorings. How much better it would have been three quarters of a mile upstream after the next two lots of visitor moorings than here.

First stop was Tesco’s in Ely, while we were shopping it started raining so we walked back to the boat in the drizzle. We decided we may as well stop here for lunch and hope the rain cleared which it did.

Setting off again we only went about 200 yds. and there was moored “Noproblem” just on the other side of the hire boats, so we stopped for a chat with Sue for a short time. The next port of call was the sani station on the other side of Ely to empty the loo tank. there is a pumpout station at Denver but if its not working we end up taking a tank full back to the moorings with us. It only took us 20 minutes in total before we were off again. This is probably the most uninteresting stretch of water that we travel on, wide and straight for about 10 miles to The Ship and Brandon Creek. Here we turned right and went towards Brandon for half a mile to fill with diesel at the Little Ouse Moorings at 90p/lt. plus duty. We are just able to turn by their service quay with the bow hard in the bank, so no need to go further upstream to look for a junction to wind in. I contacted the Denver Lock Keeper to find out locking times over the weekend. Saturday is 1900 hrs. Sunday 0730 hrs. and Monday 0830 hrs. so we will lock through on Monday and it should give us plenty of time to get to the moorings and drive home. Once full of diesel we headed back to the Gt Ouse intending to moor on the EA moorings at The Ship, but a hire boat had slipped in while we were filling with diesel, so we carried on to the Brandon Creak EA moorings where we have the place to ourselves.

Finally for tonight, this mooring is next to a large layby and picnic area, with wooden benches and nicely mown grass. however some people seem to lack any common sense at all. If you stand a disposable BBQ with red hot charcoal in an aluminium tray on a wooden table, guess what will happen. It will burn a hole in the top.

This area was established almost 40 years ago and one of the trees planted by Keith Speed MP so 40 years ago all the mature trees we see today would have been just saplings.