Peterborough Rowing Lake, Fri 30 Aug 2013

O for the quiet country mooring, no street lights or traffic to disturbed your evening, only the sound of the local farmer playing with his 500HP. tractor and combined harvester with its automatic reverse bleeper alarm and it 8 lamp spot light bar lighting the river until 11 pm at night. Still he didn’t start again until just after 7 am this morning.

We were away at 7-30 am. heading up to Floods ferry and then left onto Whittlesey Dyke. There was a sunbeam shining down from the sky, was this an omen and if so was it good or bad. Not long after this we met a suicidal swan that took off and flew straight down the river towards us, I expected to find it in the lounge as it was so close to the bow when it landed I had lost sight of it.

The water was clear and no weed problems so we made good headway to Ashline Lock. When we arrived not only was it full, you are requested to leave it empty with all gates closed but the top gates were wide open, in addition to this both slackers were also up. There are no tell tails on this lock so you have to check with your windlass. Just as we were about to leave the lock a boater who was moored on the Whittlesey visitor moorings asked us to leave the lock as he was about to leave and would be locking down, so that saved us closing up and draining it. There were an abundance of blackberries growing by the bridge over Whittlesey Narrows and if we didn’t need to catch the lock before 1 pm. I would have stopped to pick them. We met 4 boats between here and the lock, the first being a Fox’s hire boat heading back to March, the last was someone we use to moor near at Floods ferry Marina. The highlight of the day was to spot these two lovely creatures just coming out of the woods along Kings Dyke.

We arrived at Stanground just after the last boat coming down had left so the lock was set ready for us and Tina the lock keeper soon had us on our way to Peterborough.

After some unsuccessful shopping, I wanted a USB card reader to download the photos from Diana’s camera and in the end bought a lead to connect the camera to the computer, but when we got to the boat it didn’t fit. We did however buy some bottles of Doombar beer which is quite nice we headed off down to the Dog in a Doublet for the night, only to find that the EA have closed the visitor moorings for some reason. They look just the same as they did a year ago, but they have erected security fencing in such  a way its impossible to get ashore, so we had to turn and return to Peterborough for the night. Half way along this stretch of water there is a field of horses, I did a quick count and think there are the top side of 60 in the adjoining fields. Just after that we passed under some overhead high voltage cables, we had spotted a crane on the south bank as we came down, which had required about a quarter of a mile of temporary road way to be laid, but looking to the other bank I spotted these chaps, there were another couple up the next pylon as well.

We carried on through the tow and turned in beside the rowing lake to moor for the night, we wondered if there would be a space but when we got here we were the only boat, so we moored up just on 6 pm. not bad considering we left at 7.30 this morning.

Now was the sunbeam a good omen or a bad one. we saw the deer and we got a mooring by the rowing lake, but I also got the wrong lead, couldn’t get the card reader and went all the way to the Dog in a Doublet for nothing. You decide.