Yelvertoft to Welford

Thursday 9th November

John moved the car and walked back with Dex so we didn't leave until 12.30pm. No rain today thankfully but it was a bit overcast and quite cold.

I liked these mushrooms that had been carved from an old tree stump.

We passed under the M1 again.

We could now see the signpost in the distance, left for Leicester and right to go to Welford.

 It was lovely seeing all the Autumn colours.

I got off with Dex at the first bridge along the Welford Arm. It was a really pretty stretch of canal and narrower than the main arm. There were no other boats in sight in fact we had only seen one other boat on our journey today.

There is just one small lock on the Welford Arm, right out in the countryside. A hire boat was just passing through ahead of us so we had to wait. We got chatting to the hire boat crew, a couple from Australia who were doing a World tour. Strange they should end up on a narrow boat on this quiet backwater. It was their first lock so they were a bit nervous but they managed it fine.

Now our turn to go through the lock. John wanted to open the gates so I jumped on board and steered her in.

We swapped back again after the lock and I carried on walking with Dex. It was such a lovely place to walk.

At one point the towpath was closed so we had to walk around a small Marina.

We had reached Welford and now John had to turn the boat around.

We found our spot for the night. The mooring rings were on the side of the canal rather than on the top, so not easy to find and the bank sloped downwards to the water so mooring was quite tricky.

We decided to go to the Wharf pub for a pint whilst our casserole was cooking. It was a great traditional old pub and dog friendly so we could take Dex too.

Later that evening we had a problem with water levels and realised our boat had got stuck on the bottom and was listing quite badly. John went to investigate and the water had dropped by a couple of feet. He rang the canal and river trust emergency helpline. I say helpline, they didn't seem at all interested in the problem! Whilst John was on the phone I could hear footsteps outside and saw torchlight. I called out and got chatting to a man from another boat who was also stuck on the bottom at an angle. He had just walked back to the lock to find that someone had left all the paddles open which is why we were losing water so quickly. It was unlikely to be a boater, most likely a prankster thinking it was funny. So annoying! It was now around midnight. The man said the water would get topped up by the reservoir but probably would take a few hours. We decided to get some sleep as nothing else we could do. In the morning the level was higher and the front of our boat was floating but the back was still stuck. John loosened off the ropes and used the power of the engine to get us afloat. We were now a few feet from the bank but were afloat, phew! We were able to leave the boat by going out through the front. Drama over for now!