Retford

N53.339919 W000.99992618

Here I am Rune

Distance 6.7 miles

Total 1353 Locks 71 Tunnels

Running total mileage 1943.1 miles

Today I can only reiterate that progress along this picturesque canal has been glacially slow, principally down to the weed that we keep getting wrapped around the prop. One section above bridge 62 to Whitsunday Pie lock, despite being hardly more than a mile took an hour to complete with three trips down the weedhatch and numerous occasions of reversing the engine to try to throw the weed off. 

After the struggle to get here the mooring at Forest Middle Top Lock was a bit of a disappointment since there is only space for one visitor mooring here (and that was taken), all the rest are long term moorings. I don’t know who thought this would be a good idea, but it isn’t! After refilling with water, emptying the elsan and dumping the rubbish I decided that we were going to stop here ,the next marked mooring is in Worksop about 3 hours away and it was already 5.15pm, the only way of doing that would be to moor on the water point. Whilst it isn’t really etiquette there are times when practicality trumps etiquette, and this was one of those times. It has been a very quiet trip up here with not many boat movements so my thinking is that there isn’t much chance of anyone wanting the water point until tomorrow morning, and if they do I obviously have no objection if they breast up with our boat to do so. I think CRT need to create some moorings by a bit of dredging along here, it is a pleasant canal but there are very limited mooring options, just pulling over to the side of the canal isn’t one of them since there are considerable swathes of this canal where the water is less than a foot deep at the side so if we tried to moor I don’t think my gangplank would be long enough to reach the shore!