Golds Mere,Popes Corner Saturday 17 Aug 2013

As we were on the moorings last night we drove to the Swan at Littleport for dinner. We were lucky to get a table for two, not the best spot in the restaurant right by the till, but it was that or nothing.
While we perused the menu a young lady brought complementary olives, bread and balsamic vinegar/oil. We decided against wine as they had Doombar and Adnams on. It was a good move because after the beer arrived I remembered we came by car and one of us would need to drive back to the mooring.
Both our meals were first class as was the service. All in all a good night.

This morning I left the boat at 8 am to drive to Norwich to pick up my sister for the weekend.The journey only took me an hour but the return was a little bit slow. Once we had her and her bags onboard we went a short way up the Little Ouse to wind. Back downstream we turned hard left at The Ship and headed towards Ely. Today was cooler than late and much windier so although my sister started out on deck it was not long before she had to head inside.

We pulled over for lunch at the first lot of moorings in Littleport and then pushed on to Ely where Kevin had kindly leant me his mooring, this meant that we could have a slow walk round part of Ely ending up back at the Waterfront for an ice cream which we ate by the river. Once this was all taken care of we ambled along the river back to the boat.

The next stop was somewhere for dinner so we headed out of town towards Popes Corner. Passing the railway I spotted what looked to be old slam door coaches making up a train but couldn’t see an engine. Having just passed under the railway  being followed by a hire cruiser a goods train trundled over. All the moorings at Little Thetford were full with a couple of Narrowboats moored to the new piling to the Ely side of them. By now the wind had picked up quite a bit. At Popes Corner we turned right onto the Old West River and it was not long before we met a cruiser and then just before the railway a second. This didn’t bode well with me, surly by 6pm they wouldn’t have passed an empty mooring in this wind, but luck was on our side, just through the bridge I could see the far mooring post of Golds Mere moorings, then another ands another, when we cleared the bridge we could see that there was only one small cruiser right on the end of the mooring, so that was us for the night.