Preston

Here I am  Rune

Distance  10.1 miles

Total 3618 Locks  229 Tunnels

Running total mileage 5332.1miles

A good trip down the River Douglas and up the River Ribble although it didn’t go exactly to plan since we are here in Preston Marina. We had a decent shot at it but I’m not sure we were sent out soon enough. We were the second pair of boats going out and we left at about 9.45am with estimated high tide at 10.33am so only about threequarters of an hour to get to Asland Lamp before the tide turned. It was never really on the cards since it is about 5 miles from Tarleton to Asland Lamp and we were pushing the tide all the way, but still maintaining a creditable 3.5 miles and hour but 5 miles at 3.5 miles an hour is still an hour an twenty five minuted so we were forty minutes beyond high tide. At Asland Lamp we were about 9 minutes behind the lead pair as they turned but they must have realised that time was becoming tight since by the time they turned into Savick Brook we were some 20 minutes behind them and with an ebbing tide we got the call from CRT to carry on to Preston as we weren’t going to be able to get to the sea lock in time, so here we are in Preston.

Floggin down the Douglas, you can see by the bow wave of the following boat how much of a slog it was.

Rounding Asland Lamp

Mooring up in Preston Lock

It has been a reasonable mooring so far, although we are below a pub where a large group of Liverpool fans are watching the Champions League final, fortunately Liverpool have won, so they are all happy.

The plan for tomorrow is that we should get a phone call from Preston Tideway at somewhere about 11am telling us what time we can go out through the lock and back to Savick Brook. It will be an easier trip since it is only a mile and half and hopefully we should be going with an ebbing tide so shouldn’t take more that half an hour to get there. The only confounding factor is that we then have to wait for Sunday’s boats coming up (there are 4 of them) se we may be waiting above the sea lock for a while.