Aston on Trent (all weathers)

Heavy rain was forecast for Monday morning so we did some odd jobs and set off when the rain started easing just before lunch.   Here we are pulling out from behind our friends’ boats, Country Rose and Nuthatch, that we moored behind on Sunday night.   

We probably won’t see Les (on Country Rose) again until next year as he is heading to Lincoln until the New Year but we will probably bump into John and Sue (on Nuthatch) every so often as they are going to head south down the River Soar like us.  As you can tell from the name of their boat they are keen birders so we had a lot in common and they were interested in our passion for butterflies.

We needed to stop at Willington to pick up some redcurrant jam.  It was needed for a mushroom with walnut and cheese cobbler that Karen got going in the slow cooker.  The cobbler recipe was quite insistent that redcurrant jam has no alternatives.  

It was so damp and dark outside that we lit the stove which is the first time we have had it lit during the day for many months.  It was still pouring when we got to Stenson lock which is the first double width lock on the Trent & Mersey heading east.  It is also fairly deep so we were pleased when a boater, who was queuing to come up, offered to take our line and open the gates for us.  This meant we could be on board and head straight out of the lock without the hassle of pulling in and picking Karen and Buddy up.

You don’t often see chrysanthemums and dahlias these days – they are considered old fashioned now.

When Buddy stays on board in a lock he seems totally unperturbed by the water leaking through the gates behind him. This lock was leaking particularly badly as can be seen in the picture at the top of the page.

By the time we got to Shackerstone lock the skies had cleared and the sun came out.  We paired up with Anthony and Karen which made things easier.  They live on their boat near Nottingham and had been out for a long weekend.

 This bridge is the ironically named Fine George’s bridge.

The sun stayed out for the rest of the afternoon…

…but we decided to make Weston lock our last one for the day.

It was clouding over again we moored up just before Aston lock with about 10 hours cruising left to get to Loughborough on Wednesday afternoon to meet up with Catherine.