A neat day in Newark

Photos from Saturday 11th July

The first lock of the day in Nottingham central city

More converted warehouses

Nicer looking apartment building than most

Apartments start from 250,000 - didn't look like many were sold

Not sure if it's a private house or a club, but amazing house!


This slalom ran beside the lock and the river


Back to the big river locks

Enormous constructions with just our little boat

Abandoned factory


Australian boaties we shared a lock with

The only bridge over the Trent for 24 miles

Jill & Den enjoying a gin and tonic

There are some pretty flashy looking cruisers along the way

The crew weren't the best after the gin! No wonder the lock keeper was irate if he'd been watching this performance!

The Bromley Arms, Fiskerton, where we couldn't get a mooring - then read the next day you need to phone and book one, shame the previous lock keeper ommitted that information from his recommendation!

Look like we're travelling at quite a pace

Wharf warehouse at Newark-on-Trent

Den & Barry trying to work out the lock, after 8pm and the lock keeper had gone home - luckily he was around and came and opened it up for us

Jill checking out the floating party boat and adding a touch of dancing herself

Barry, Den & one of the Adams

Jodie, Adam, Jill & Sandra

Sunday 12th July

There were a couple of sore heads on board this morning, and both of the male variety! I didn’t get a good sleep as I kept hearing the boat banging against the side of the mooring here and wondering it the river level was going down, imagining we would be just floating in mid air held by the ropes in the morning! Of course Barry said not to be so silly (once he was conscious), and of course it was fine, but it’s amazing how night-time terrors can grip you and cause you to think the strangest things isn’t it?!

Den feeding getting up close to the cygnets

The swans off again past the Trent Bridge with the castle in the background

Our mooring in Newark - doesn't the boat look tiny on the big river?

After a full English breakfast (great bacon thanks Jill!) we all had a quiet morning. Jill and Den thought they’d catch a few rays on the roof of the boat and I think had a bit of a lie-in up there! The forecast had been for rain all weekend, but we had one slight shower yesterday afternoon and today it’s been sunshine most of the day. We all then went for a walk around the ruins of the castle and the town, before finding a Wetherspoons for some ‘hair of the dog’ for Barry and Den. It‘s a lovely little town, with some really neat buildings of all shapes and sizes and a huge market square.

Newark is situated at the junction of two old highways: the Great North Road and the Fosse Way and is of historical significance. During the English Civil War it was a Royalist stronghold and was besieged three times by the Roundheads between March 1645 and May 1646. When the Roundheads eventually took the town they unfortunately dismantled the castle (http://www.newark-sherwoodc.gov.uk/) so it lies in ruins. In its time it would have been magnificent. King John died there in October 1216 soon after his traumatic experience in ‘The Wash’, a piece of sea not far away. Barry informs me that he got bogged down there and lost overboard some of the crown jewels that have never been recovered and people still go searching for them today (something like that anyway!) …

Newark Castle ruins

We choose Newark Carnival day to look around, lots of colourful characters by the castle

The market square - all sorts of different old buildings here

The Council offices

Jill and Den pole posing in the square

St Mary Magdelene Church - building began in 1160 and completed around 1500

A very ornate frontage of a building, complete with little monk-type carved characters

The remains of a large chimney that heated the church

Not sure who the architects were in those days, these buildings just appear to rise up from one end of the square

Jill and Den at the Weatherspoons having a pint in the afternoon sunshine

The very quaint, hidden away team rooms which has been serving tea for over one hundred years, but closed on a Sunday

The church at the end of the shops

The Castle Barge - aka a very large pub and party boat

Another view of the castle from the bridge

The walk into town with 'The Mayze' directly ahead where we were drinking Saturday night - turns out to be the most expensive pub in Newark but witha great atmosphere and helpful landlord! You get what you pay for in this life

Newark lock

Back to the boat late in the afternoon for a Sunday roast before our visitors caught the train back to Tamworth. A fantastic, fun weekend; it’s really fabulous to find such spontaneous people. Few family or friends have had the time to come and stay with us so far, so it was great to have their company. It’s a bit of a tight squeeze on board, but very cosy and convivial!

They seem to be obsessed with the roof of our boat - maybe due to them recently returning from scuba diving in Egypt?

After posting Saturday’s blog this morning, my dad emailed and reminded me that Newark is also famous for the fact that Stephanie Slater was found in a garage here in 1992 after being raped and held captive in a booby trapped coffin for 8 days by Michael Sams. Stephanie befriended the kidnapper and now gives talks to police on ways to negotiate with kidnappers, but has lived with her nightmare for the last 15 years, finding it extremely hard to have anything resembling a ‘normal’ life which is very sad.

Stephanie Slater’s boss, Kevin Watts, was the person who took the ransom money and dropped it off on a walkway that he didn’t know until later was actually a bridge. Kevin is my eldest daughter’s father, and a very brave man. I believe he was presented with a medal for his actions, especially as he lost contact with the police along the way and he ended up doing the drop alone, in the dark and fog bless him.

Stories around this, if anyone's interested, can be found at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-436314/Im-kidnappers-prisoner-15-years-later.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/kidnap-victims-boss-tells-of-fear-during-ransom-drop-1492641.html

No journeys on the boat today as we would've had to travel around 30 miles to the nearest train station for Jill and Den. There also don’t appear to be any moorings for miles along the Trent, so once again we’re finding it a challenge on the river and look forward to back being on the canals sometime soon.

We studied our next journey during the evening as we will be going onto the tidal part of the Trent once through Cromwell lock. We won't go too much into the possibilities so as not to frighten any family or friends, but we will be following the sea and hoping not to find a tidal bore called the Aegir, along the way (would be quite tame though by the time it reached us apparantly and seems to only occur with spring tides so fingers crossed!). With a bit of luck we will take a slight detour off the river and visit Lincoln over the next day or so, where some of my fathers relatives came from.

Joking apart, life jackets definately at the ready for this part of the river ...

Who’s the skipper of this boat?

Saturday 11 July

We picked up Jill and Den from Nottingham station and they helped with the first lock. After that it was back onto the River Trent where all the locks are manned by lock-keepers. Our aim had been to moor for the night at Gunthorpe, but unfortunately Jill asked one of the lock-keepers where the best pub was along the route and he said ‘The Bulmers Arms’, at Fiskerton. So, although it looked like a good place at Gunthorpe, we decided to continue on. Once we arrived at Fiskerton we realised that there was no-where to moor up! We did try one pontoon until we realised that the only thing it was attached to was another boat!

So our journey wasn’t broken into two days and we arrived in Newark-on-Trent late in the evening. We encountered, along the way, the most aggressive lock-keeper you can imagine at Hazleford, just before Fiskerton. To be fair, Den was being a little playful and had pretended to climb up the lock gates, which was rather foolish. He then went up the ladders at the side of the lock, thinking he had to hold the ropes from above, and the lock-keeper came out of his little room and went ballistic, totally over the top.

“Get back on your boat right now. What do you think you’re doing? Who is the skipper of this boat? You are in charge of your crew, and I’m in charge of the safety of boats coming through this lock, and if you don’t behave yourselves I will not be allowing you to continue your journey but will eject you back from where you came from.”

Of course Jill and I could see that Barry and Den were bursting with testosterone, the usual male cave-man stuff, and if they had been on land and at the same level as this little Hitler I dread to think what may have occurred. Actually Den was very calm and said very little, but there was no stopping the kiwi captain from negotiating with this man who wanted to know where we’d been and where we were going. Having been on the rivers and canals for over three months and never been asked that question before, Barry understandably wanted to know why he wanted to know. He mumbled something about having to log our journey, how he’d got records of every boat that had come through for the last ten years, etc, etc. Eventually he apologised for being so rude and abusive, and waved us out of the lock.

My fear was that we were going to be banned form the River Trent and the rest of our trip would be somewhat curtailed!

Ah well, an unfortunate interlude on an otherwise very enjoyable journey. We had a lamb Rogan Josh (home cooked of course!) and then went into Newark for a few drinks. I had had the most terrible hay fever all day and my eyes were incredibly sore and swollen – mostly because I’d run out of piriton and was too stingy to pay £1 for seven tablets in Sainsbury’s when I can get loads of piriton from Boots for next to nothing! That’ll teach me. Jill and Den got chatting to Adam, the Landlord of the Mayze pub, and he drove them to the nearest shop to buy some ‘piriteze’, bless him!

We met some lovely people in the pub, three Adams and a Jodie, a great atmosphere. Jodie recommended we continue to another pub, but once we got there we found there was a £4 entrance fee so we went back to the boat. Barry was a little worse for wear and went to bed early—almost unheard of! Maybe it was the homebrewed rum he had shortly before we went out …

Anyway, no photo’s until tonight (Sunday) as he’s still not too good and we’re off to look around Newark Castle and whatever else we find here. Jill and Den are leaving us this evening, back to Tamworth and London and work tomorrow …

Nottingham, but no sign of the Sherrif so far ...

True to the forecast, a mixed bag of weather today but no rain, so that was positive as we had a mixture of river and canal again, which is what much of this stretch of waterway includes.

The imposing towers of the power station at Sawley

The lights are green, so back onto the Trent

Shared a lock with this steam powered narrowboat


The lock keeper squeezed as many boats in the locks as possible

I'm beached bro'

I'm beached as

I'm so beached ...

Some of the poor boats we saw along the way.

For the non Kiwis, go the link below to see the 'beached as' Australian piss-take of the kiwi's ....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdVHZwI8pcA&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fnationaltrust%2Eorg%2Enz%2Fbeached%2Dwhale%2Dnz%2F&feature=player_embedded

We found ourselves in the middle of a steam boat regatta of some sort

Lovingly restored craft that just glided through the water with just the occassional hiss and puff of steam-beautiful

The passengers must have been full of tea by the end. Everytime we saw them they were drinking tea (made on board of course!)

Jill and Den met us at Beeston, a small town on the outskirts of Nottingham. We stayed here briefly for lunch in April when we were travelling around boat hunting, and weren’t sure due to our previous experience that we’d find a decent place for lunch. Luckily we asked a passing cyclist who recommended ‘The Victoria’ just over the bridge towards town, which we found fairly easily by car. What a fabulous place! Certainly not cheap, but an extensive menu and the food was delicious. They have a good garden bar, spoilt only by the chairs and tables being placed in regimented rows and the fact that passenger and goods trains pass by every few minutes, yards from where you’re sitting! A very pleasant lunchtime, thank you Jill for such a wonderful treat.

Sandra and Jill at the Victoria Pub in Beeston

Sandra, Den & Jill. Fabulous lunch, thanks again Jill

The pub is hidden away on a dead end street by the railway station, it must be a local secret

Their events list was extensive and by the look of the 'Sold Out' notes on some, are really popular (e.g. curry and quiz night next Monday)

We went back to the boat for a cup of coffee and a walk to the lock, which Jill had a go at doing as she’d never done one before. She was like a duck to water, no problem.

Jill and some random guy closing the lock gate

The steam boats returned as we were doing the locks

Still drinking tea ...

Just cram them in!

Sandra & Jill - midwives/lock girls extrordinaire!

Lots of hours of polishing here

Send this lot out ...

... and bring the next lot in

"Zara Finn"

Jill about to catch her skirt in the mechanism

After that we took them for a short drive down the canal and back again. Jill tried a spot of driving then came to the front of the boat with me and we talked midwifery (another colleague to talk to and put the world of women and babies to right!), while Den and Barry ‘manned’ the boat. On turning round back at the lock, I stood up and the cushion that had been behind my back fell into the canal—luckily Jill noticed it floating away. OMG, one of my £10 ‘NEXT’ cushions; I almost jumped in to save it but managed to restrain myself. Barry and Den, with some skilful manoeuvring, managed to retrieve it for me and amazingly it wasn’t too wet and dirty.

They must have loved the boat ride a lot as they are now coming back on the train tomorrow until Sunday, so we’ll drive down river to Newark-on-Trent. It looks like an interesting journey with six or seven locks so Jill will get plenty of practice! It'll be great to have visitors on board again.

They must have a heap of spare time on their hands here in Nottingham to restore these beautiful boats

Went for a walk down the towpath to the next lock in the centre of Nottingham

Loved the composition and reflections in the canal

Down the Trent to Sawley

Thursday 9 July
I wanted to call this blog 'Up the Trent ...', but Barry corrected me—apparantly it's down river because we're heading towards the sea so travelling downstream. It just seems odd to me, we're going 'up north', but 'down river'!!

Old warehouse in Shardlow converted to a house or flats

The river levels have been high the past few days due to the heavy rain, but luckily today it was on the orange not the red so we could continue up to Sawley Marina (when they're on red you can't go further). Before we left Shardlow Barry managed to source a metal back hatch from the Marina there and got it customised to fit, so he's spent the afternoon sanding and undercoating it. The previous wooden one was starting to rot due to peeling paint, so this one will be much sturdier, a great find and at a very reasonable cost too.

My morning was spent washing, sanding and varnishing the windows of our cabin (as well as working the locks of course!). Two down three to go! Boy, they're a vast improvement now.

We've also pumped out you know what, pumped in water and diesel, and done three loads of washing at the launderette here at Sawley. Someone unfortunately left some nails in their laundry right before my wash which broke that machine, so I had to do all three loads separately as, despite the number of boats here, they have only two washing machines which seems incredible. It's been a hard working day today for us travelling gypsies!!

Flood control traffic lights at the entry point to the Trent River. They were red a couple of days ago

Pretty impressive bridge just to carry two water pipes across The Trent

Sawley Marina is the largest inland Marina in the country, with 600 berths for boats of all shapes and sizes—and boy there are all shapes and sizes and conditions of boats here from the ostentatious to the awful! We previously visited here in April when we were looking for a boat to buy and almost bought one, but its hull was just too rusty. It's a pleasant and well-kept place though, with friendly people and a huge Chandelry (that's a shop with all sorts of boaters 'stuff' in for anyone not familiar with the term).

Sawley Marina

Massive house boat at Sawley Marina. Apparently doesn't go anywhere

The hatch! sanded and ready for painting

Beautifully restored steam boat pulled in and filled up with coal

Tomorrow we're meeting up with another friend and her partner who are driving up from Tamworth, and they’re treating us to lunch out. The forecast is a mix of sunshine and clouds so fingers crossed!