Lyra's Travels

Friday 3rd May 2013
Our stay at Retford was only slightly marred by a couple scroats who chucked a cream doughnut from the other side of the canal, just a sticky mark to wash off.
This morning we had a lovely breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast and marmalade, both the bread and the marmalade are made by Cath's fair hand.
We set off later than usual and cruised along in worm if not sunny conditions. The scenery is still very open, but there are signs of the coming steep climb. The flat land has started to undulate gently, and ahead of us are the 4 Forest Locks. the locks around here do seem to be very well maintained, both mechanically and aesthetically. Admission here: this dozy idiot didn't replace the memory card in the camera, so no pics today. The camera clicks on merrily recording nothing.
At Forest Middle Bottom Lock there was a thoughtless nerk who left his boat tied up to the lock mooring. Usually there's somewhere to go, but today the wind was blowing us into the weeds on the off side and also making it very difficult to tie alongside the offending article. I would dearly love to have cut it adrift, but that would only cause problems for other boaters. It was here that we got a taste of the weed problem that people had warned us of, having to dive into the weed hatch twice. Actually most of what I retrieved were in fact hedge cuttings.
At Forest Middle Top Lock though there were several large floating islands of weed. I managed to steer the huge one at the top gates out of our way before it could cause us grief.
As long as you stay in the middle there seems to be plenty of depth, but stray just a little and we get pulled around quite strongly. Lyra is 30" at the stern, so we get early warning if the bottom is getting too close to the top.
We decided not to go very far today so have now moored up at Ranby, a small village with just a pub in it.