Distance 6.5 miles
Total 4053 Locks 264 Tunnels
Running total mileage 5896 miles
First real experience of the proper River Nene, and it seems to be OKish. The strong wind might have coloured my judgement slightly so on a calm sunny day I would say it is a lovely river to travel (so far). The locks are a bit different with guillotine gates as the bottom gates, but they are easy to get used to. The only real issue so far has been a dearth of moorings. My original plan was to moor up at Weston Favell, where there are 48 hour pontoon moorings, but when we got there, they were occupied by two workboats and they were on the lee shore of the wind, which would have meant we would get onto them easily enough, but with the wind that was blowing, we’d never get off again.
I tried ringing Northampton Boat Club who are AWCC members to see if any moorings were available there, but got no reply. Tried ringing Billing Marina to see it they were open, but once again no reply. The workboat that had been on the Weston Favell moorings came through and I had a chat with one of the Environment Agency staff from it, who told me that the nearest moorings were quite a way further on. Since the only boats that we’d seen on the move today was the workboat and ourselves, we eventually settled on mooring on the lock moorings at Whiston. The way the system works here is that you leave the guillotine gate up when you leave the lock, so by mooring on the lower lock moorings we aren’t inconveniencing anyone since they can go straight into the lock through the open gate. We’ll need to keep and eye out for anyone coming downstream but on today’s performance I’d be surprised if anyone turns up.
We’ll be gone first thing in the morning as I have to stop at White Mills marina to pick up a Friends of the River Nene membership starter pack, which allows us to then use their moorings.
