Car Shuffle and Aston Lock

Today's Navigations : Sawley Cut, River Trent, Trent and Mersey

Mike was off in reasonably good time, just before 8 am. The aim was to take the car to Brinklow, our next planned stopover. The drive did not start well as the sat nav refused to s tart up! In the end, he set off with the route being displayed on his phone. However, after about two turns, on the route towards the motorway, the sat nav in the car suddenly sprang to life and stayed active for the rest of the journey. Suspicion is that the marina has some poor spots for a phone signal.

At first, the ETA at Brinklow marina was only two minutes before the time for which a taxi had been booked, leaving no margin for delays. The departure  time had been planned last night on the basis of arriving at least 15 minutes before the taxi was due! As he travelled down the motorway it improved somewhat so Mike assumed that the usual slow section around the M69 intersection had been 'priced in' and that traffic was now moving through there a bit less slowly. And so it seemed.

With the sat nav saying only 4 minutes to go, the taxi driver checked in to make sure Mike was going to be ready for him and to let him know what the fare would be. Coming though the last village and suddenly the 4 became 9 and the route took him up a narrow lane and all the way around the tiniest mini roundabout! In the end, Mike arrived with one minute to spare before the booked time and as soon as Mike had left the car the taxi was at the gate to the marina.

Just in case time was short, Mike had bought his tickets on line yesterday and he was a tad relieved when the bar code on his phone opened the gate to the platforms! The route back now involved three trains and a bus. The first train was just three minutes late departing but as long as it did not worsen, there was time to catch the first connection at Tamworth.

Checking the platform number online, Mike discovered that his next train was almost half an hour late as the result of another train in front of it having a fault. It was now a matter of seeing how much more time the train would lose before arriving at Derby, to work out an ETA back to the boat. 

The wait on Derby station was not long and the local stopping train to Newark (first stop Long Eaton) was on time, even if it was not the one planned. A bonus was that the walk to the bus stop was shorter than Google showed. There are two bus routes that pass the marina and, with some useful local help, Mike boarded the next to arrive only minutes later. He still checked with the driver that he stopped at he right place!

It did not feel like it at the time, but surprisingly, despite the keruffles, Mike arrived at the boat barely half an hour later than planned.

Meanwhile, as usual, Christine had taken advantage of Mike's absence to clean the floor and some other housework. 

Time for a much needed coffee (Mike had not had a chance to buy one on his travels) and then lunch. We were even able to set off a little earlier than our plan for the day! Christine walked around to the marina office to return the gate fobs (since a fob and key was needed to do this, we could not return them earlier!)

Mike nudged carefully out from the mooring - the layout here really only just allows for 60 foot boats. It does look as if many of the longer term moorers here are river cruisers and only perhaps less than half are narrowboats.

Now turned through 90 degrees to face the way out and so to pick up Christine waiting somewhere near the exit onto the navigation.

Almost immediately after leaving the marina is Sawley Flood Lock which is intended to protect the marina and other moorings on the Sawley Cut when the river is in flood (it does not always work as the flood levels in recent years have exceeded the protection that the lock affords)

Today all is benign - even the wide Trent weir did not feel especially menacing, Best not to take it for granted, though.

Under the motorway - strange to recall that it was built even before we moved to Loughborough in 1967.

The next large water pipe structure carries the Leicester Pipe of the Derwent Valley Aqueduct over the River Trent. Built in the early part of the 20th century, it consists of a single span bowstring girder on cast iron supports. It carries two pipes, of 33 inch and 36 inch diameter. (Geograph)

Derwent Mouth is the confluence of the River Trent coming in this picture from the left and the River Derwent, which looses its identity here on the right. Our route to the Trent and Mersey Canal is straight ahead, between the two rivers.

A boat was already coming down at Derwent Mouth Lock - we had met the boater when we passed this way a few weeks ago. He said then that he did not move very much!

No need to close Shardlow Flood Lock - only excuse for including the picture again is to assure Adam that we can sometimes get the names right!

This boat is moored at Shardlow - it looks splendid and a challenge for non-Gaelic speakers to pronounce! They really do want us to know where they come from but not too make it too easy. Always curious we put the LatLong into Google and found that it points to Taynuilt on the A55 into Oban in Scotland. Presumably this is the Anglicised version of taigh-an-uillt!

Unlike to next few locks, Shardlow is a remarkably shallow. Both cottages at the lock are under renovation but the Lock House work seemed to have come to a halt after a bit of demolition. A Notice from  CaRT very recently indicated that it was now and should not encroach on the canal side access. Close, though!

And so to Aston Lock. It is rather deeper than the first two on the canal and we had to make sure that the boat really was under rope control before opening paddles to lift it up. As we were just opening the gates, two boats arrived in the other direction so we could leave the lock to them to close up. We found a space where we hoped, just beyond the upper lock landing to moor for the night - a bit earlier had been rather noisy from a main road.

4.0 Miles - 3 Locks