Sunday 19 Aug 2012 River Lark

Last nights mooring was very quiet and we both got a good nights sleep. This morning the river was crystal clear when I looked out of the side hatch, I am sure that will change a bit when the boats start moving.

 

Just before we set off a large, well for this river, barge came downstream, we had seen it moored just below Hermitage Lock when we came through yesterday, he must have made an early start as he was probably only doing just over 2 mph. After setting off it wasn’t long before we were catching him up, but I was quite happy to travel at his speed so held well back and allowed another Narrowboat that caught us up to pass and sit behind him. We saw very little traffic for the first hour or so, then we all met a cruiser, as the cruiser came round the bend the lady on the bows was pointing to her left, so thinking she thought they were short of room I pulled further to my right, she started pointing more vigorously so I , maybe she wants me to go the wrong side of her so they can go to her left, so started to swing to my left, at which point the cruiser started swinging his bow to my left. At this point I stopped and backed up letting him go where he wanted, he when the correct side of me in the end and as he passed and thanked me he was complaining that big boats like that shouldn’t be allowed on the river as they were far to big and had caused him to go aground. We plodded on our merry way at 2.5 mph until  we reached a straight wide section just before Twentypence Bridge, where he waved us passed, now he may only been doing 2 mph but the best I could manage was probably just over 4 mph so we were running out of river by the time I got through.

The floating fern weed was completely covering the river and is multiplying at quite a rate. It didn’t cause us any problem but boats with raw water cooling are suffering.
As we approached the EA visitor moorings just before Popes Corner I spotted Graham and Jill moored there so we pulled alongside for an hour or so and helped them drink some beer. While we were there the barge came trundling by, still doing a steady 2.5 mph.
It wasn’t long after this that it started to thunder and the sky to the south of us got very dark, there were even a few drops of rain. We said our farewells and moved on. In Ely one of the water cycles was out with two youngsters on it, the smallest one had a life jacket but not the other.

We then met the barge again who indicated that he had been unable to find a mooring in town.
On the Adelaide Bridge moorings we passed NB. Yarwood who were hard at work dog swimming. A little later we met James driving Lucky Duck back towards Ely. The next thing we encountered were three people swimming back and forth across the river, they were strong swimmers and were taking care to watch out for the movement of boats. 
We were heading for the River Lark hoping to moor on the GOBA moorings about half a mile down there, but it was not to be as there was a boat there already so we headed into Prickwillow, but again the moorings were all full, so we winded and came back to moor opposite the EA Tom Hole moorings. Since we have been here needless to say some of the boats moored in Prickwillow have gone passed heading to their home moorings, still the BBQ is on the bank alight and the rain didn’t  materialise, the only downside is dust from the harvesting going on on the next field.
One of the things we noticed at Prickwillow was that the roof has been removed from part of the pump museum, I do hope this is a planned event.