Building resistance while getting scuppered

Our coddiwompling is coming to an end for a while as winter draws near. It is possibly my favourite season living afloat and we’ve decided to try something new this year.

For the first time, we’ve determined to try staying in one place for the winter months near our family. A couple of weeks ago we sat outside a pub at 8am (not desperate for anything stronger than a decent internet connection), to ensure we could log onto the Canal and River Trust website to book a place on the winter mooring of our choice. Some winter moorings are very popular apparently and being winter mooring virgins we have no idea if the one we want would be one of those.

We managed to get on and have booked for four whole months from November 1! Four whole months in one place will allow us to be close to family and friends for the winter, a chance to help out, to be involved parents and grandparents for a time, and to enjoy being part again of local clubs and groups. It should be a sociable winter and hopefully also allow us to attract lots of additional paid work.

So our plan is to return to Leicestershire for the winter. We didn’t make that last year because of flooding, so we knew it could be a risk, but the long-range forecast looked hopeful. However, getting there now isn’t actually going to be as straightforward as we or you might think. On the day we decided and paid (a LOT of money), we saw some horrendous pictures from the canalised River Soar, and yes, that’s the river where we intend to be mooring.

So going straight there from the Caldon was out. Plan A involved 72 miles, 6 furlongs and 51 locks. It would have taken us down onto the Trent and Mersey Canal, travelling its length to Shardlow, where we would join the River Trent at Derwent Mouth. From the Trent we would then turn onto the River Soar. At the time we planned this both the Trent and the Soar were in flood so closed to navigation. Plan A catered for this climate change weather situation because over the years we’ve come to expect this. There was some planned work expected to be finished on the Soar on 25 October so we had time to sit and wait for both rivers to come out of flood and that work to finish for us to do a dash (such as you can in a narrowboat) to our mooring location. That section of the journey, particularly with a fast flowing Trent, could be done in one very long day.

Plan A was scuppered by Canal and River Trust and the weather. They had begun replacing both sets of lock gates at Ratcliffe Lock on the Soar before the flooding began, but as the water levels rose, they had to abandon the work. This was a repair that was due last year in the winter stoppages programme, which operates from November to April annually. Guess what? Flooding then meant they couldn’t do the work then, so they started it this autumn.

So we then started to look at Plan B. That involved a detour, a serious detour. It was 144 miles, 2 3/4 furlongs, 97 locks, 2 moveable bridges and 5 tunnels resulting in over 3 miles travelling underground.

It would take us to Fradley Junction on the Trent and Mersey, onto the Coventry and  ultimately via a series of waterways onto the Leicester Line starting in Northamptonshire. We would then work our way down to Foxton Lock Flight, and right through Leicester before arriving on our planned River Soar mooring.

But Plan B was also scuppered by Canal and River Trust and circumstance. In order to get there, we would need to wait until the river Spar section was out of flood, and that could take us into another problem. One lock at the Leicester end of the Soar is already out, and work to resolve structural damage and a hole in the bottom gate there is awaiting flooding to abate so that won’t even be started until the waters go down. At that point it’s highly likely that a planned stoppage at Whetstone Lock south of Leicester will have started if the river has dropped out of flood. That work to replace lock gates and repair brickwork of the lock chamber is expected to take until 19 December to resolve assuming it starts on time on 28 October. So, no way through and highly unlikely that we could get through both hurdles given time scales and flood levels.

On then to Plan C…this involved Plan A but at the River Trent junction with the Soar there’s also a junction with the Erewash Canal and we haven’t yet made it up the full length of the Erewash.  Covid scuppered that plan during our initial foray there in June 2022. So Plan C involves the Plan A route plus a voyage up and down the Erewash by which time we will hope to see the river Soar out of flood and Ratcliffe Lock mended so we can do our mad dash to our winter mooring better late than never. That’s a 96 mile, 6 furlongs and 81 lock plan.

Will it work? We can but hope it will, remembering from past experience that the unexpected is often invaluable. As I write, both the Soar and the Trent have dropped out of flood, which makes me optimistic . If Plan C doesn’t work, then we’ll just have to magic up Plan D whatever that might be, find a new winter mooring, lose all out money for the original mooring and pray that nothing en route will literally scupper us!