Sunday 7 April 2013 Prickwillow

After mooring up we wandered along the cut towards Upware Lock stopping to chat to a couple on there boat and give them a lift with their shopping, turned out he was the digger driver who is working at Denver Sluice. Round at the lock EA were in attendance and the cruiser who had been moored on the lock landing had now gone through as had two other waiting boats. We did consider going through but as the EA had not found the fault we didn’t want to be stuck the wrong side today.

A pleasant evening in the Five Miles from Anywhere, I think they must have the fastest service for food that I have ever come across in a pub that does more than burgers and chips. The portion sizes are good as well and three beers on the pumps, one from just down the road at Brandon. We left before the entertainment started and headed back to the boat.

This morning we woke to bright sun shine and very little wind, I didn’t even need the insulated overalls on. There were one or two boats about, but not many.
As we approached Dimmock’s Bridge I spotted a Barn Owl sitting on one of the notice boards.

At popes Corner we headed straight on towards Ely meeting a boat of 4 rowers on the way.
We moored in Ely just through the road bridge and had an excursion to Tesco’s, we haven’t done that recently. Returning to the boat I put a coat of white gloss on the the line on the cabin side, although it was over white undercoat its covering power is about the same as skimmed milk. There then took place a bit of chatting with local boaters and visiting ones before heading off again. We were going to stop for water in Ely but there was already some one doing a pump out and topping up their tanks. On the riverside in Ely they have built a new house on the end of the Babylon gallery. It doesn’t seem quite the right place for a new building.

Leaving Ely we headed East towards the River Lark.Just outside the town there is a rowing club, I have never seen them out but they have lots of boats on there hard standing. They have recently (in the last week) replaced one of their floating pontoons and the base of the old one is laying on the bank, it looks to consist of hundreds of plastic milk bottles, I wonder if they had a campaign to collect them all.

There was no change at Adelaide Railway bridge with the floating platform under the bridge and scaffolding reaching over half way across the river. Just before the River lark there are what can best be described as “Hanging Basket” hooks on the edge of the piling, they look to be made from something like reinforcing rod, I wonder if its yet another attempt to fill the river with weeds?

When we reached the Lark we turned right with a view to mooring on the EA moorings, about half a mile from the junction on the left, although the river is almost straight for this section the moorings sit back from the reed line so you can’t see from the junction if they are vacant or not, today there was a narrow boat there so we continued on, we were almost out of sight when I saw him behind us, turn in the river and head back down stream. If we had been 5 minutes later the moorings would have been free. We carried on and moored in a deserted Prickwillow, this also gave us the opportunity to top up the water tank.
Once moored I slapped a bit of light and dark blue on the side of the boat over the white undercoat, it needs another coat and there are some sags in the light blue, but it looks much better that last week when it was rusty.