Monday 17 December 2012 Salters Lode

It was a nice little mooring down Popham Eau. We had a bit of rain just as we were going to bed but it didn’t come to much. This morning at dawn a crow decided that to sit on the bridge we were moored by would be a good thing, then he could call his mates in, I appeared he didn’t have many friends, regardless of how often or how loud he called no more came, so he just sat there calling away.

When we got up it was a fine day with a very light covering of cloud, we were away at 9 30 am and I gave Maureen a ring to tell her we were on our way to her lock. I only got the answer phone and when we arrived at the lock there was no sign of her so we worked ourselves through.

On the way to the lock, back on the Old Nene we passed farm trailer with a hovercraft on it, it didn’t look as if its run for a few years.

Well Creek was its normal slow drag in the mud, but the weather was getting better all the time. The mile posts along the road that run parallel to Well Creek are interesting with the sign of the crossed keys on them.

I found it difficult to get any information about this marking. There is a place called “Cross Keys” which is not a million miles away and also I found a reference to St Paul who is the patron saint of travellers. But if anyone know a better answer I am all ears.
As we made our way passed Nordelph I heard the call of birds and looked up to see a flight of swans going over, we could hear them calling last night when we moored up and guessed they were at Welney.
We tied up at Salters Lode at 1 30 pm and went to have a look at the river beyond the lock and already you could see the mud and it was only 3 hrs. after high tide. When we looked again at p.m. with the time still falling this is what greeted us, a sandbank just about filling the entrance to the lock.

We decided to take a walk down the river bank to see the state of the silting at Denver sluice before it got dark and what we saw was not a happy sight. The silt bar runs from the east bank, upstream of the lock landing out as far as the edge of the sluices and right up to the face of the sluices so you can’t even get round behind it. The water is just covering the mud in this photograph right up to the buoys. Something with less than two feet draft may be able to get along the back on the top of a good tide.

The last few times that we have come this way there has been a sunken boat opposite The Crown Lodge Hotel at Outwell, as we passed today it was gone, but we found it at Salters Lode sitting on top of a bonfire.

Again we were treated to a grand sunset with the sun going down over Well Creek, if we get another three days like this I shall be very happy, even the ducks seem to be enjoying this nice weather.

As you can see from this photograph there are a couple of boats waiting to cross to Denver if the silt gets scoured away, one of them has been here a month now, but as he said “If you don’t need to be somewhere there are lots worse places to be stuck”

I will try and get some more shots of Denver in the morning before we leave, but the tide will be higher.