From Brian.Holt@tesco.net Sun Aug 29 20:07:33 1999 Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1999 17:47:23 +0100 From: Brian Holt Reply-To: Canals To: Canals Subject: Trip Report part 4 West Stockwith to Lincolnshire [ The following text is in the "iso-8859-1" character set. ] [ Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set. ] [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ] We locked down to the Trent with a local narrowboat and I allowed him out first, as he knew exactly where he was going. He asked me if I was OK and did I want him to wait for me as he always travelled at 600 RPM below maximum revs on the river, I assured him we would be OK and we set off for Torksey. I kept him insight for quite some time until I had a high engine temperature alarm come up. I had been running at about 2300 rpm. I let the engine drop back to tickover and watched the gauge carefully giving it the occasional technicians tap; just to be sure it was falling. In a short time the alarm cleared and we carried on at our normal cruising speed. Like Lady Elgar we also met a barge on a bend and passed on the wrong side of her so she had the deep water on the outside of the bend. She was fully laden and there was quite a deep depression just behind her bow but with all the water in the river we didn't feel a thing. The rest of the trip to Torksey was, thank goodness uneventful. The Fossdyke and Witham navigation. Now we were off the Trent I took the opportunity to tighten the V belt on the alternator/water pump to see if it would improve the engine cooling. I suspect we may require a new thermostat in the engine as I have felt for some time that the domestic water has been hotter than it use to be and of course the engine doesn^Òt normally work so hard as it did on the river. I didn't find the Fossdyke as boring as I had expected and we met more large vessels here than we did on the Trent, BW were moving some of their equipment. We arrived in Brayford Pool, Lincoln, in a horrendous rainstorm. We really wanted to stop to do some shopping but we could hardly see across the basin let alone find a mooring so we carried on through the Glory Hole and stopped by the roadside just past The Witch and The Wardrobe. Di nipped off into the shops while I stayed on the boat, the smell of oil and petrol on the water was quite bad with the storm drains working overtime. On the side of the canal I saw a discarded hypodermic and a young chap some what the worse for something wandered over the garden and was about to climb over the railing when I went out to meet him. He decided that our chocolate Labrador was a Rottweiler, I didn't disillusion him. If anyone is going down to Lincoln and fancy going through the Glory Hole but they don't want to go to Boston, the river is very wide above the lock about half a mile past the hole. We would like to have spent more time in Lincoln, I've been there once or twice in the past to visit the Ruston gas turbine works but Di had never been. Surprisingly it was right opposite there that I moored while Di did the shopping, she also walked back to get some photos of the Glory Hole as it was raining far to hard to use a camera outside when we passed through. The storm cleared as quickly as it arrived and we pushed on. The next lock Stamp End Lock was our first ever guillotine lock. The guillotine part is motorised but the bottom gates and paddles are manual. As we travelled down the Witham we were entertained first by the Kingfishers and Dippers, but they gave way to the RAF with its low level fighters, and god are they low, thankfully they were only flying during the day so the nights were peaceful. Then looking around I saw what I think was a Hurricane fly past, it was some way off so I couldn't be one hundred percent sure. Our holiday came to an end at Tattershall Bridge having done some 230 miles plus the ten mile excursion with our visitors and 107 locks, most of them hand operated but a few manned on the Trent. We set to cleaning the boat for the arrival of John and Gillian, they were bringing our car and taking away the boat. Just after they arrived we were treated to another fly past, this time a Lancaster and a Spitfire, this time I am a hundred percent sure, I could almost see if the pilots had moustaches or not. We went to the Royal Oak for lunch, which is all home cooked, I would describe what we had as plain but good quality and value. On the way back to the boat to say farewell we were almost persuaded to leave the car and join them as they travelled to Boston and pick up the car on the way back. Sad farewells and the shortest journey we have ever had home. --- The UK Waterways Network - http://www.ukwaterways.net/ * bringing the inland waterways community together * You are currently subscribed to canals as: george@adiva.com To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-canals-407N@ukwaterways.net