Hemingford Grey Monday 8 July 2013

Yesterday the river was busy until quite late. On the other side of the there were lots of people with canoes, fishing swimming etc. Of course eventually the light a fire fuelled with branches broken from the tree etc. Then about 8.30pm. they found something plastic to burn with the resulting black smoke and stink, we got the odd whiff but not much, however the next thing we know is that there are two fire engines making their way down the track towards them.
Last night was the hottest so far this year and we went to bed with the fly screens in and all hatches and doors open.

This morning was much cooler and early on it was quite misty on the river. Again there have been quite a few boats about, the first one passing well before 7 am.

We set off at our normal 10am just after a Narrowboat had gone by, but he was making much better speed than we wanted to do so we thought that would be the last we would see of him. As we made our way up past Holywell the sun started peeping through bringing the Dragonflies and Damselflies out in force. I had a Dragonfly land on my shoulder and this Damselfly landed on the Binimi. It wasn’t look after this that the Binimi went up for the day, that way I can drive without a hat or shirt on.

When we arrived at St Ives Lock there were two Narrowboats and a cruise waiting to go up and a Narrowboat coming down, so we had to “tread water” until the first Narrowboat, the one that passed as we pulled away and the cruiser had gone into the lock, we could then get on the lock landing and go to help them on their way.
By the time we got into the lock there were three boats waiting to come down. The boat we were sharing with was almost out of water so I suggested he followed us to the water point.
On the way we had to wait at the bridge for the St Johns Trip boat  to come through, if anyone knows how to contact them please let me know.

When we arrived at the Waits was a bit like Piccadilly Circus with a wide beam moored almost on the water point, the Narrowboat who had just done the lock on the outside of him filling with water, behind them was a wide beamed cruiser and then we pulled in and the other boat came on the outside of us. We ended up watering up with 3 hoses joined together to reach from the tap back to where we had moored. Once full we backed out onto the main river and headed to Hemingford Lock where there were two boats entering just as we arrived, it turned out the Narrowboat had gone hard aground on the sand bar below the lock moorings. We helped them up and the boats above down, one was a 1957 wooden ex Cambridge hire boat with a petrol engine. Once through the lock we headed up past Hemingford Grey town GOBA moorings.

At Hemingford we met another Narrowboat, I didn’t catch its name but the two men on the back shouted “hello Brian” and the steerer indicated he followed my Blog, the other chap looked very familiar but he wasn’t wearing his working clothes.
It was good to see that the farmers are getting the hay this year, lets hope it stays dry until they finish, with the wind picking up like it has today it should soon dry. We went up almost to Houghton Lock trying to decide where to moor tonight, we finally decided on the GOBA moorings at Hemingford Grey so turned round and headed back downstream to the meadows mooring at the very upstream end.