Newark on Trent

Tuesday 1st October 2013
That's it, we really are into the short end of the year now. The months are in double figures, and we can see signs of turning leaves although not much yet.
I had one of those 'good feeling' moments this morning as we reversed out of our overnight mooring. We had moored on the inside of a floating pontoon and moved forward as far as possible to allow another boat to get in behind us. This meant that we had to reverse out around them.
Reversing these things can get tricky, but sometimes it just goes right. This morning was one of those times. As if she was on rails Lyra glided backwards, manoeuvring to avoid the moored boat, then swinging around in the river to face the right way. All without a hitch or hiccup. Someone should have been filming!
After using the services at Gunthorpe it was just time for the lock keeper to open up.
We were joined by "Aisling Gheal", the name means "Beautiful Dream" in Irish Gaelic.

The owner was picking up a friend in Newark and continuing on down the Trent hoping to eventually get to near Blackburn for his winter mooring. When I told him of the stoppage at Burnley he had to rethink his travel plans, and will now probably have to divert onto the Huddersfield or Rochdale canals.
The radio came in handy again today. There's a fair bit of dredging going on, and a large barge was being manoeuvred into the lock at Hazelford. the lock keeper was able to keep us advised about what was happening.

We reached Newark at about 1.30, we had hoped to get on one of the moorings with a power connection, but they were taken when we got here, we were lucky to even get a pontoon mooring as we had to tie up on a wall for lunch, but later one of the boats left so we hurriedly got ourselves over there. The wall moorings here, although plentiful, are high and Cath can't climb off the boat.

Just after mooring up, 3 more boats turned up in a group. One of them was short, about 50 ft. and they could get into the small gap between two boats on the pontoon where we wouldn't fit. This allowed the other two boats to tie up alongside them. Very handy. They had all come from Gunthorpe, where we were last night, and chap from one of them came along and returned the fender which we had lost overnight. We looked for it this morning, but could see no sign, so thought that was that. He'd found it floating past his boat, picked it up and returned it. What a star, thanks.

We are here tonight, and maybe tomorrow night as well.