Lyra's Travels

Monday 6th May 2013

Well! Who would believe it, here it is Bank Holiday Monday and the sun is shining high wide and handsome.

We've actually seem some boats moving here on The Chesterfield Canal. Just to confirm it was a holiday we saw a long traffic jam on a road next to the canal

This morning we set off from Worksop hoping to reach Retford. The canal seemed to do its best to prevent us. I had to make 3 excursions into the week hatch to retrieve first a hoodie, that brought the engine to a shuddering halt, next a huge clump of edge trimmings, a lot of which were bramble, ouch. The last item was some building plastic.

It may be that because this canal doesn't have a lot of traffic but I've noticed several instances of boats staying on lock moorings, and today I had an interesting altercation with a fisherman. The chap in the picture was occupying the middle of the lock mooring. He became quite abusive when I tried to moor up, and said he'd fished there for years and boats had always avoided him. I would say that the human race would avoid him if he acts like that.

One of the really good things about this canal is the anti vandal locking mechanism. It's simple, robust, and simple to use with a watermate key.

We made it to Retford despite the obstacles and have once again moored up near Asda, we'll shop tomorrow.