Leicester

Today's Navigation : River Soar

Just ten minutes after uploading yesterday's blog we had phone call from one of the leading lights in the Boaters Christian Fellowship who was keen to meet up with us on our way through North Lock. She lives quite close to the canal in the city to the west. So we arranged to be at the lock at 10:30, only 10 - 15 minutes from our over night stop. This gave us the opportunity to have a particularly slow start to the day.

Before leaving, Mike took a further look at the outer end of the moorings - Christine had explored last night after we had finished the blog. It seems that a full set of facilities is under construction - and has been for several years! It looks close to completion but as yet no announcement has been made. We have seen a tourist leaflet, jointly prepare with CaRT, which shows the navigation and nearby facilities and points of interest. It shows both mooring and water at Memory Lane - published in 2023! We were tempted (almost) to try to see of the elsan was actually working but realised that if we got it wrong then . . . In any event, the flush has not yet been enabled.

We also noticed that the elsan is in compliance with the recently published new policy on boater facilities in general - the future is to remove all elsan units from buildings and to use free-standing open-to-the-air designs.

The large building on the other side of a large car park is the Mattioli sports arena, the largest performance space in the city and home to Leicester Riders, a professional basketball team.

We set off with an ETA of 10:29 and motored up to North Lock. The number of chimneys and flues alongside the water are indicative of the past and present industrial history of this part of the city. In one building we could see inside a number of people working at sewing machines - garment making is still a significant part of the economy here.

Approaching the lock we could see that it had been emptied and the gate made ready for us. Mike hopped off anyway as it is best to ensure that at least one line is taken ashore even in the shallower rises.

Coming under the bridge arch we could see that Ann was there, waiting to greet and welcome us to the city where she has now settled for the past couple of decades after many years in all sorts of parts of the world. (Sadly we were most forgetful and later let her leave us without taking a clearer picture of her! Tut tut)

Ann would have liked to join us on the short cruise up to Castle Gardens but found that the drop from the towpath down the the boat was too much for her knees and so she asked to meet us at the far end of our trip - she walked and arrived not long after we did!

We were told that until the very late 20C, the city regularly flooded quite badly but a campaign for funding to tackle the problem eventually led to flood alleviation works and there has not been any serious flooding since then. We do not know what form the works took, but there are several very wide weirs which can dispose of considerable flows - the scale of them can be intimidating when encountered for the first time (or even later ones!)

We passed the Friars Mill moorings and noted that there were at least two free spaces that we could come back to if needed, even though they are not as near to the cathedral as Castle Gardens.

Alas there was no a large enough slot for us at Castle Gardens - there was enough room but it was split up into several bits! We nudged our stern into one gap so that our visitor could some aboard quite easily and then went to the opposite side to moor on the rings which are quite frequent along the Mile Straight. It was a quiet and convenient place to have coffee and chat. The conversation went on and then we spotted that it was time for lunch. 

Ann left us soon after so that we could visit the nearby Tesco for a larder top-up. We then settled down for a quiet afternoon, followed by time for Mike to prepare salads for dinner later.

It was close to six o'clock when Christine asked if we could move somewhere else. Back down to Friars Mill was the better option - Mike had already measured the width of the river at this point as just over 22 metres and we are 18 and a bit. This was fortunate as it is nearly a mile upstream to the next marked winding point. We also knew that there was good depth on both banks.

We started the turn with fingers crossed and were pleased to note that we came around with around 2 metres to spare both back and front! 

Of course by the time we reached Friars Mill some ten minutes later, others boats had occupied the spaces we noted this morning (they must have come down when we went shopping as we did not see them pass by). Fortunately one boat kindly agreed to move enough to let us come in to a space that had been just a teeny bit short. The only problem is that for some unexplained technical reason, the pontoon has been created with one of its risers on the outside, just where we fitted in. As a result we are moored in not the most elegant manner. Picture tomorrow - perhaps!

1.7 Miles - 1 Lock