A mooring tip. Don't moor by the Malt Shovel in Shardlow on a Sunday night because very, very early on Monday morning the beer delivery arrives. Crashing, banging and rolling of the barrels not only woke us up but sent a quivering Jade scurrying to the bedroom. Having had our sleep cut short, there was no point in staying in bed so we decided to have a fried breakfast and then head off toward Sawley. Passing John Cooks where we had the party, we found boats trying to move out. The flood gate is just yards from the arm and trying to get 70ft working boat out was not easy.
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Trying to get through the flood gate. |
Also waiting to depart on their boat Nb Thornbury was Chris & John Bayliss. You may have read in towpath talk about his British Empire medal. He does no end of work for
ECP&DA turning up for the work parties nearly every week.
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John Baylis BEM: John Baylis has led campaigning
work for IWA for over 30 years, and has been instrumental in all the
major waterway development and restoration projects in the East Midlands
since the early 1970s. He was the driving force behind the restoration
of Frankton Locks on the Montgomery Canal - negotiating, leading work
parties, devising engineering solutions, inspiring volunteer support and
making sure the funds were there; and he was part of the team that
restored the upper end of the Erewash Canal and has continued with the
maintenance of the Great Northern Basin at Langley Mill ever since. He
led IWA's Navigation Committee for over 10 years, was a deputy chairman
of IWA, chairman of IWA's East Midlands Region and a director of
Waterway Recovery Group for 30 years (many of those years as its deputy
chairman). He was awarded the Association's most prestigious award, The
Cyril Styring Trophy, at the 2011 AGM. |
Knowing they were due to to go up the Erewash, we waited for them at Derwent lock and sure enough 10 minutes later they arrived. We trundled down the river together but as we were going to stay at Sawley for another day, they carried on towards Sheetstores where the boat was going in for a repaint.
We moored almost at the same place as last Thursday and when these Sygnets turned up I just had to grab the opportunity to get some photos.
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Mum joins in |
4 comments:
I love following your blog and have been doing so for many weeks but please use spell checker its cygnets xxxxxxx sorry xxxxxxx keep up the blogging though x
Oops. Doesn't pay to rush a post!! Thanks for putting me right, Nicky. I do use spell checker but it never seems to check the heading.
awwwwww bless ya keep up the good work my friend has a narrowboat and we dont get to use it to often with work etc but reading blogs like yours are as good as being out on the cut xx
ha ha !!!! Now you know how we felt every time you hopped by us very very early in the morning !!
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