We stayed at Loughborough all day Saturday and Sunday, taking in a walk around Victoria Park with the Carillon set in it. Sadly we just missed the recital that Sunday as we had been to the cinema again, this time to see the Bourne Ultimatum, which we thoroughly enjoyed, the more so because the two preceeding films in the series had been shown on TV a week or so earlier. Carol can't believe that I go to the cinema now, I always usually retort that the film will be on TV soon! Tight (well diluted) Scottish blood must be the reason, though I understand that as we now have an Orange phone we can go to the cinema for free on Wednesdays! The cinema in Loughborough has been pleasantly modernised and the staff were very helpful.
So it was on Monday morning that we set off northwards again, stopping at Bishops Meadow facilities, which I have to say are far from the best on the system, a fact I passed on the the area BW manager. We shared the lock with a trip boat from Barrow Boating and gave instructions as to how to work a lock, though how they got that far without working a lock beats me as they had passed through 2 already. What we did discover is that Bishops Meadow lock is short. Lily is only 70 feet long, or at least we only paid for 70 feet, but when I tried to open the gate I was not able to do so and Carol had to use the bow thruster to go out the other gate.
The river downstream of Loughborough is about the most beautiful cruising we have ever enjoyed, everyone should try it. We stopped at the Rose & Crown in Zouch for a beer & cappuchino before going on to the river Trent junction and got a lovely mooring at the end of the cut to Cranfleet lock. We travelled for just over 5 hours this day, very slow cruising is our norm.
Our mooring that night was at 52deg 52'30.68N 1deg 16'13.27W.
Despite the power station and the Sheffield - London mainline crossing about 1/4 mile away it was a lovely quiet spot overnight, and the weather was good on Monday, and Tuesday dawned bright too and continued on through Cranfleet lock and on to Beeston lock where we entered the Nottingham and Beeston canal. We stopped at the services block there to fill and empty, and I took photos of two boats that were moored on the lock mooring points, which I sent on to BW.
Having recharged we poddled along in the sunshine to moor outside Castle Marina in Nottingham. We only cruised for 3 hours and we stopped here until Thursday. Simon, our son-in-law rang to see if he could cadge a bed. He lives near Chichester but had a meeting in Bishops Stortford on Tuesday and another in Crewe the following day. By stopping with us it saved him 5 or more hours of driving. It was a bit of a celebration too as he had just been advised of the size of his annual bonus, which rather made me wilt!
We stopped through Wednesday too and wandered around Nottingham a bit though Carol's back gave her severe problems and she retired hurt. Friends joined us for a meal at the Baltimore Diner and, rather to our surprise, we all enjoyed the food. They also brought our post, having collected it from Sally's. This is a bit of a problem as we still seem to be getting an awful lot of mail despite my best efforts to stop it.
Now after another quiet night we are going to head off to Newark, though whether we will get there today I doubt very much. Weather still good as is the forecast for the next five days. Our location here is 52 deg 56'47.35 N 1deg 10'02.02W. Google Earth was wonderful at plotting Simon's route to find us too.
