Saturday 17 May 2014

Stanground to March and chips with everything.

On the moorings at Peterborough, literally.

Presumably a victim of last winter's high water levels.
Before heading for Stanground we took advantage of the facilities kindly provided by Peterborough Council, including the free pump out.

After completing the neccessaries it wasn't long before we were moored just below Stanground Sluice and

 were then ushered in by Tina, the lock keeper.

Out the other side and we were on the Middle Levels, Kings Dyke to be exact.

Passing the local industry, chip making. They must get through a few tons of spuds in there everyday, I wonder if they have mash on the menu in the works canteen?

Briggate, too busy getting round the notorious bend to think of the camera until we were round it, a feat we accomplished with no major dramas.

At Ashline Lock you need the local windlass, eighty-seven revolutions to lift just one paddle penstock. A whole new vocabulary here. We only lifted the one, it took a little longer for the lock to fill but what's a few minutes?

Fifty-eight to lift the bottom penstocks. She'll be a dab hand at stirring the Christmas pud after that.
Just above the lock there is a mooring for one boat, that is the only place to moor between Stanground and March.

From then on, basically high banks

and long straights and, I just have to get the expression in somewhere,

big skies.

At Flood's Ferry we changed hemispheres by crossing the Greenwich meridian, presumably from the western to the eastern, without even feeling a bump as we crossed.
So we eventually moored in the park at March, don't know what today may hold.

Watch this space..........



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