The Tide is high, so we're moving on ...

Some more photos from Sunday in Newark-on-Trent

Newark Castle and Trent Bridge from our boat

Our view across the river with the "Castle Barge" floating Restaurant/Bar

Newark Castle in late light

Trent Bridge with Northern Pride on the left

Newark Castle ruins as an upsidedown reflection

More of the Castle, very photogenic!

Part of old building now a Bar

The church tower through the canal side houses

As we were getting ready to set off to the supermarket, I got chatting with a couple who were looking down at our boat. It turned out, spookily, that they were from New Zealand and are considering doing exactly what we are somtime in the future! I think their names were Paul and Sue, but could be completely wrong! Anyway, we invited them on board to show them our Pride of the North and the map of our journey so far. Sue originally comes from Newark but informed me she spent 8 years sailing to New Zealand with her husband who then wanted to return to England. Quite rightly she said “I don’t think so thank you!” and remained in Auckland where she has lived now for 8 years and continues to reside on her boat, caring for other peoples boats when they are away. What a great job! Paul has a boat next to hers and they share a cat that goes from one boat to the other – they also take the cat out walking with them on a harness! How cool is that?! We’ve given them our blog address so hope they follow our travels and get in touch again.

Onto the tidal Trent today, so we firstly visited the British Waterways office just along from our mooring after the slight delay. We found some very helpful people there, one of whom wanted Barry’s ‘Popeye’ t-shirt as it was his nickname! Barry did offer to swop it for a BW jumper, or his blue jumper and name badge, but although tempted, he sadly declined. They phoned ahead for us and we found that if we wanted to go to Lincoln today we had to leave immediately. So we hurried back to the boat, got sorted and set off.

British Waterways offices at Newark

Two huge locks were encountered shortly afterwards, both with very friendly and accommodating lock-keepers which was so very refreshing after Saturday’s experience! I think he was a one off, after a long day, and seeing a boat with people messing about, just lost his rag!

The first of the big locks for the day

Again not many bridges crossing The Trent

A Crested Grebe, common around Newark

I remembered that my father used to have relatives in Lincoln, so I texted and asked if there was anyone still there. It turned out that a couple of distant cousins still live about a half hour’s drive away so he phoned them and gave us our contact details and we arranged to meet up later. Unfortunately it took us longer to get to the canal to Lincoln than we estimated, despite no stops along the way other than the three locks, and Dave and Rosalyn weren’t able to wait so late. They’re off to Hull tomorrow but may be able to pass through Lincoln tomorrow evening and come and visit; we hope so.

That’s one of the challenges of travelling by narrowboat, you can try and guess how long a journey will take at 3-4 miles an hour, but you can still be an hour or more out due to different obstacles along the way.

The Trent from Cromwell Lock was a vast body of water and we passed a few huge (well they looked huge compared to our wee boat!) barges travelling up river. Luckily each time Barry was driving the boat rather than me, even though I did take a turn for 2 hours—phew!

The mighty Cromwell Lock, then out onto tidal waters

We were a bit lost in it

One of the 600 ton gravel barges that come charging up the river. Caught us on a corner so had to pass on the left

A converted windmill I think

There were a number of large power stations on the way, and Barry informed me that 25% of the England and Wales’ electricity is produced around here.

The first power station had five cooling towers

The next one more impressive with eight!

A little cottage on the bank at Torksey

The entrance to Torksey Lock

The power station from Torksey Lock

Bit of a contrast

Very confusing lock system, there are also gates to keep The Trent out when in flood

Torksey Lock

Found a boat for Dylan

As we came into Saxilby, just outside of Lincoln, we failed to outrun a thunderstorm. At one stage it felt as though the lightning struck across the boat, but although it was scarily close, it was the static from the electricity pylons which I could feel. The gap between lightning and thunder was less than a second, and Barry actually saw it strike the ground near to the boat—yikes!! Very heavy rain, so heavy that it was difficult to see more than a couple of yards of canal.

The storm coming at us... at more than 4 mph

Looks like it's checking out the pylons!!

Boy did it come down!

Once moored in Saxilby, we had dinner then went to ‘The Anglers’ pub where there was a darts match on. They were playing on a very unusual board that we’ve never seen before, one with only doubles and no trebles. Most bizarre!

The "Lincoln Board" as it's called