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Wednesday 15th January 2003
A LITTLE LIGHT BOATING
| Visitors to the Soar Boating Club after today will notice that Rumpus in now moored bows in, rather than stern on. This is why. Today was too good a chance to miss: having been occupied with matters domestic and administrative at home during the morning, lunch and shopping left me with a clear afternoon, with blue skies, bright sun and scudding white clouds. A phone call to BW at Sawley established that the Soar was open, so I loaded the car up and set off at 2 - by 3 I was boating! I did have an excuse (as if one were needed) - I wanted to see if my newly-acquired mini-TV (the ones Nauticalia are selling for thirty squids) would need an external antenna in Rumpus's largely wooden cabin. It will, but it won't be getting the push-it-up-and -twiddle-it-from-inside-the-cabin job that Graham Booth describes in Waterways World - it'd cost over twice as much as the telly! Having wiped the engine 'ole roof on the inside and spent a good while restoring the tiller bar, pin and padlock to its normal standard of shine (and got rid of all the water spots from before Christmas) I cast off. A Rumpus-style pirouette revealed that the river was still too high to go down the backwater above the weir, so I contented myself with a trip to Zouch Lock and back. I exchanged greetings with one of the occupiers of the new houses 'twix road and cut, but apart from him and a couple of people exercising dogs I saw hardly a soul. I paused above Zouch Lock to light the stove and get a bottle of beer. It's interesting that the towpath has subsided (at the edge) in a couple of places which have been well marked and are being worked on, but BW has seen fit to close the towpath from the bridge down to the lock because of the problems. Having said that, the fence that's allegedly designed to stop you going down the towpath has a gap a meter wide at the water's edge: perhaps a case of "doing what's required" but being pragmatic about it? On the trip back, I suddenly remembered an Aid to Winter Boating I bought last year - a pair of woolen fingerless gloves (like market traders habitually wear) which I can assure you are better than gloveless fingers! The trip back was equally uneventful, other than the wind being stronger than the current, making mooring up "a little interesting". I had to potter over to the Clubhouse to get some water, as the stand pipes are off for the winter, but enjoyed a drink of hot Marmite and a spectacular sunset behind the clouds before switching off, locking up and coming home. |