A pause on the Soar, visiting, and Windows 10 growing pains…

On Monday we took up a three-night berth at Pillings Lock Marina. We’d left Sileby  at around 10, dropping down the lock and joining John and Barbara, NB Clarice, then heading off in convoy to Mountsorrel.

Solo in Sileby Lock
 

Below the lock, Barbara just untying the fore-end of Clarice

The recent program to eradicate the invasive floating pennywort on the river has been partially effective. In the past there’s been narrow channels through the rapidly-spreading rafts of vegetation, now there’s only isolated pockets lurking amongst the reeds.

There was a festival at Mountsorrel on the previous Sunday, when I passed on my morning run that day the moorings above the lock were three deep! There were still some boats left on Monday morning.


Below the lock, near the footbridge, there’s an old Fibreline narrowboat moored.

Chirk Tunnel will be one of few survivors from this company, who’s attempt to break into the narrowboat market with fibreglass boats was short-lived.

We had a short stop at Barrow Boating, the Clarices to fill with water, us to have a brief chat with Alex who moors there. Then it was down Barrow Deep Lock and out onto the river again to Pillings Lock.

The alpacas on the Barrow Cut have had a haircut…

Under Soar Bridge below Barrow Deep Lock

After Pillings Lock we turned in to the marina, John and Barbara carried on into Loughborough to have a look around.

Bye!

We had a useful stay in Pillings Lock Marina, a car from Enterprise in Loughborough gave us the opportunity to visit family and friends, including Pam and Terry on NB The Rooster’s Rest, currently near Burton on Trent.

Tea and cakes with the “Rooster’s”

Today, despite the threatening weather forecast, we were out of Pillings before 10. You can only spend so much time in a “boat park”, the open towpath was beckoning…

Getting ready to leave the marina

The canal into Loughborough is more like a river in places…

Didn’t there used to be a tip and recycling centre here next to Moor Lane Bridge?
Looks like it’s going to be more housing.

We caught up with NB Clarice again near Chain Bridge, they’d had a good rootle around the town, and decided to wait for us to appear before pressing on themselves.

We dropped down the two locks out of the town, rejoining the river below Bishop’s Meadow.
It left the navigation just above Pillings Flood Lock and made a sweep to the east through Cotes and Stanford on Soar.

It’s a fine stretch of river heading to Zouch, past Normanton on Soar
It’s even better when the sun’s out…

The cows weren’t confident about the weather, either.

Weirs just upstream of Zouch Cut 

There were a couple of boats coming up Zouch Lock, so we waited for them to exit. John decided to hover in mid-channel, but the wind made it difficult…

A bit of a do-see-do above Zouch Lock


In Zouch Lock


More fine river below Zouch

We moored beyond Devil’s Elbow, across the fields from Sutton Bonington.

Unfortunately one of the crew on the boats in Zouch Lock had put the wind up Barbara, talking about potential flooding on the river with the forecast heavy showers over the next 12 hours or so.
Always a bit nervous about rivers, she wanted to be somewhere a little more secure, so they decided to turn around and head back to Zouch Cut, there to wait out the storm and keep an eye on river levels. Prudent, maybe, but we’ve stayed put. The river is low anyway, and could benefit from another few inches! I don’t think there’ll be a problem. (Famous last words…)

Anyway, if we do get stuck here for a couple of days it’ll give me a chance to come more to terms with the new Windows 10. After a painless and trouble-free download and installation I’ve had a few “issues” mainly due to security and compatibility with my legacy software. But we’re getting there… After spending an hour trying to get photos off my camera I managed a work-around, but it’s not satisfactory in the long term. I had to take out the SD card and use a USB card reader. Then dragged and dropped the files into a folder created first. Windows 7 used to do that for me…
And that’s just one problem…

Locks 6, miles 12