When I looked out of the engine room doors this morning the sight that greeted me was out of this world. The river was as smooth as a mirror but here were no reflection, the surface was completely covered with white petals and tree seeds. Before I could go and get my camera an EA patrol launch came through and spoilt it all.
After a while it all calmed down again but the cover was gone leaving wonderful reflections.
A little further on we did pass the remains of the white cover on one of the bends, but it was not a patch on what it had been earlier.
We set off at twenty past ten at a very sedate rate as we planned to stop at Prickwillow for the night and we wanted to get at least 3 hours cruising in. We saw more boats around today than we have seen all week and it took us just two hours to reach the mouth of the river Lark.
As we turned into the Lark a cruiser coming down stream turned in behind us.so I pulled well over to let him pass, needless to say when we reached Prickwillow he was moored right where we wanted to be and like most cruisers, there were 4 moored in Prickwillow, they all scurried off home at about 4 pm.
Now a moan, cruisers complain that us Narrowboats take up a lot of mooring space. In these parts the EA have put in some very nice visitor mooring, all with mooring posts, they keep the grass well cut and are a pleasure to use. Today every cruiser we have seen has been moored using the second mooring post from the end and in one case two cruisers were moored each end of a mooring, both one post in so as not to leave room for a third boat in the middle and they say we are inconsiderate.
Coming up the Lark I saw another Cuckoo flying by and then we saw a very large bird of pray, I think it may have been a Harrier but it was too far off to be sure, then as we rounded a slight bend it jumped up and flew off with something in its talons, again taking us by surprise but I did manage a photograph of it.
We arrived at Prickwillow to find a cruiser moored on the first moorings as described above, but we planned to use the second lot of moorings on the left. There we found 2 cruisers moored as described above so we backed up to the first, going right back against the stern of the cruised to leave the water point free. Before I had stopped the engine after mooring the said cruised had filled us with petrol fumes and left, so I went back to the end of the moorings, which was just as well as we were later joined by yet another cruiser. We moored at 1 pm. and all the cruisers mentioned above departed by 5 pm. A little after 6 pm a Wilderness Beaver turned up and moored ahead of us called “Five” The lady had owned it for 35 years from new and still enjoys her time on it.
Since we have been moored up I have treated yet more rust, this time on the cabin side as well as the roof.
We have also fitted smoked film to the glass in the pigeon box to reduce the heat of the sun coming in.
1 comment:
Nice view.. it's beautiful when the reflections are like that. Sheena takes the mickey out of me for calling it "the time of day before the weather starts". To be the first boat out on the river when it's like that, is a very special thing indeed. Sorry the EA blew it for you. Picture 2 not showing up for some reason (which may well be me). regards.. and a big wag for Magic.
Post a Comment