The attack geese of March

 

They squawk and hiss at dogs and passersby (unless carrying food) and when the town hall clock clanks the hour they join in with a cacophony of honking.

The clocks clanks (March's clock cannot be described as having chimes) are turned off during the night but nobody turns off the bloody geese.  In the early hours of the morning they still find things to make a lot of noise about.

Denver

 

So it’s onwards to Denver but before crossing onto the Middle Levels I have to do a bit of car shuffling.  I’d had to bring the car over to get to a job and to go to my daughters pop-up and I’d left it in Little Thetford. I thought it would take about 45 minutes to walk to Downham Market station and thought I was moored on the nearest side of the river.  I was wrong.  I hadn’t taken into account the hike around the Denver complex. Still we arrived, breathless, within sight of Downham Market  Station with nine minutes to spare.  Then there was de dah de dah and the railway gates closed for the upcoming train and then remained closed until our train had arrived and left and we were trapped on the wrong side of the crossing watching it come in and go out.  That left an hours wait until the next train so we did the only thing we could do in the circumstances.  We went to the pub. The Crown Inn in Downham Market is an old coaching inn, panelled in light oak and with a magnificent staircase.  We settled in and almost missed the next train. We got to Ely, had a long walk to Little Thetford, felt a great sense of relief that the car was still there, drove back to the ‘chips with everything’ Jenyns Arms, had a couple of drinks and then got a good dousing with rain on the walk back to the boat.

 

On Sunday friends came for lunch.  We set out to do a circular walk, completed two thirds of the circle came across a herd of cows (with calves) and turned round and came back the way we had come. Large black clouds were heading towards us, streaks of rain trailing from them.  We thought we would get back to the boat before the rain reached us.  We didn’t.

 

On Monday it was return the car to my mooring at Barnwell.  Drove to Barnwell and cadged a lift to a station. Took the train back to Downham Market, set off walking towards Denver and large black clouds.  This time they veered off to the left and I stayed dry.



On Tuesday it was through the tidal stretch of The Great Ouse.  I was sent through the lock and told to wait on the landing on the tidal side of the lock for further instructions.  There was some hold-up at Salters Lode because a boat was too long for the lock.  I seemed to be waiting there a long time.  I kept an eye on the tide, I didn’t want it to change suddenly and leave me stranded.  As it happened I went down to Salters Lode on slack water and the wind dropped which made the tight turn relatively easy.  Rain was forecast for the afternoon so as I didn’t want to get wet again I tied up and decided to head March the following day when it was forecast to be dry.



 

...and back

 

I set off early from Brandon in case the odd woman comes along asking if I have read the pamphlets from the Jehovahs Witness (I haven’t).  The morning is sultry and insects dance along the surface of the water.  My travelling companion takes over the steering and I get a rare chance to sit in the bow of my boat when it is moving.  It is very quiet, the engine bumbles away discretely in the background, the water laps against the hull, the foliage floats passed.
 

Highlanders in the lowlands

I have my new camera ready to record the wild life.  The helmsman diligently slows down when passing moored boats but speeds up when there is a photo opportunity. There are countless kingfishers, more in a few miles of river than I have seen all year, a pair of egrets fly ahead, there is a marsh harrier and there are herons galore but none of them stand still long enough for me to be able to photograph them.  The only living thing I manage to photograph is a sedentary cow. I’ll never make a wild life photographer I have neither the speed of reaction nor the patience to wait in the right place. In future I’m just going to take pictures of buildings, they might not be as interesting but at least they don’t go flying off just when you’re about to click the camera.

 

 

Down The Little Ouse

 

 

With feet wet from the dew soaked grass and with three peacock butterflies hitching a ride on the roof we set off from The Ship Inn on a sunny morning to travel along the Little Ouse to Brandon.

‘What do we do when we get to Brandon?’ asks my travelling companion

‘We turn around and come back again’

We pass the everlasting line of boats on The Little Ouse Moorings. Then we meander onto a quieter stretch of river where yellow waterlillies float and stacks of rosebay willowherb, bindweed, reeds and grasses grow densely along the banks. Then we pass more boats on The Piggery Moorings (spaces available).  The river widens then narrows again. Masses of indigo and turquoise dragonflies dart over the surface interspersed with needles of turquoise damsel flies. The water is so clear that I can see the fish the grebe is diving for and the weed the swan is stretching it’s a long neck underwater for. Herons flap, swallows swoop and a pair of kingfishers scurry past.  In the fourteen miles of the tranquil Little Ouse only two moving boats pass by. 

Good moorings are hard to find on The Little Ouse

Then we arrive in Brandon.  It’s the school holidays.  Kids are fishing, shouting and jumping into the river from the EA mooring.  We think it might be quieter if we go through the lock where my map says there more moorings. The map also says the lock is only forty foot long but I don’t notice that bit of information.  I put the boat in the lock, find it doesn’t fit and have to reverse out again.  I turn and moor back on the EA moorings pulling as far forward as possible to give the boys room to enjoy being boys on a hot summers day at the start of the school holidays.

Coming back from town we talk to a woman who comes regularly to swim in the river.  Ten minutes later she taps on the boat and gives me a bag of walnuts and leaflets from The Jehovahs Witness. I thank her for the walnuts and assure her I will read the pamphlets.

The ‘jump in the river contingent’ ask if they can jump off the back of my boat.  I say ‘Yes’ but tell them if they injure themselves I’m not going to administer first aid.  Then they ask if they can jump off the roof.  I say ‘No’ because the river is too shallow so they say can they use that ‘big stickie thing’ on my roof to measure the depth of the river.  They troop into the water with my boat pole on their shoulders and pronounce that the river is very deep. I still don’t let them jump off the roof.

It’s nearly 10pm when there is a shout of ‘Aaron your mum is looking for you’. They all pick up bikes and fishing rods and wet clothing and disappear in the direction of Brandon.  Peace reigns.

 

Dragonflies? Damsel Flies? Insecty things?

I've got a new camera

Grandson Dominic taking a picture of me taking a picture of him.  On balance I think the pictures taken with my new camera come out better than the one he takes with the lens cap.

Later I set off down the Queen Adelaide Straight, the most boring stretch of river in the country but I had my new camera with me so I took photographs:


Going towards Littleport

 

Looking Back

 

Looking left







Looking right

I told you it was boring!





Getting wet

On Monday night I put the herbs in the cratch because they were getting hot and dry on the roof.

I put the washing out to dry.

I opened all the windows, doors the side hatch and its cover because it was stuffy on the boat.

I left the cushions and my book outside and then I went to bed

I think I should have looked at the weather forecast before I went to bed or even taken a bit more notice of those big black clouds sitting on the horizon.

Trying to be helpful

My time was up on the Little Thetford mooring and I had to be in London for a couple of days so I decided to leave the boat at Ely.  I needed water and there was a boat just leaving the water point in Ely as I approached and another boat waiting for me to pass before he moved out.  So I thought I’d head straight onto the water point instead of turning first, as I’d intended, then I wouldn’t get in the way of the boat that was letting me through.  It turned out that he wasn’t leaving he was waiting for the water point and I’d just stolen his place. Fortunately they were a friendly couple who accepted my grovelling apology and we tied up together making a cats cradle of hoses and ropes and managed to chat, fill up and empty and leave simultaneously.

The only space available in Ely was outside The Cutter pub it looked big enough but it wasn’t.  With an audience of pub customers I tried to put a 60ft boat into a 58ft space.  The narrow boat in front rapidly undid ropes and pulled up a couple of feet and I squeezed in. They were another friendly couple who tied up my bow ropes and gave me a cup of coffee.  A wide-beam moored alongside for a while to wait for some visitors to arrive and I chatted to the mother of the owner and was invited to stay with her if I ever went to Arizona (well you never know).  So one morning:  three lots of lovely people.  That is a good hit rate because as we all know you can get some surly buggers out on the water (me included).

Ely was packed, boats came back and forth looking for mooring spaces and I felt a bit guilty as I was going to leave the boat and go away so made the decision it might not be EA legal but it would be more considerate of me to go back to Little Thetford and leave the boat there.  So I did, when I left for London my boat was at the end of the mooring in splendid isolation.

I was in London to help my daughter do a pop-up restaurant newcrossdining.co. They were two very hectic but enjoyable (mostly) days.  The food looked good but us staff didn’t get to try any because the bloody paying customers scoffed the lot. At 1.30am on a Sunday morning the tired and hungry staff left the management (daughter and boyfriend)to finish clearing up and went to a crowded MacDonalds in the East End for much needed burgers and fries.

When I arrived back at Little Thetford the boat was no longer in splendid isolation. There were boats fender to fender along the mooring, boats double moored, one moored on the metal bit before the mooring, one moored in the reeds further down.  Ely was probably empty maybe it would have been more considerate of me to stay there. In contrast to the night before, in Central London, all was quiet and rural and I sat in the bow and watched the sun go down, too tired to even open a bottle of wine.

Finding the boat

I had friends coming over to lunch and a group coming in the evening this week. So I said I would be somewhere south of Ely.  They wanted me to be more precise. OK I said I’ll be at Little Thetford.  That should be simple to find and an easy place to park a car.

'I might come on my bike which side of the river are you on?’

‘Do you have a post-code for my satnav?’

‘If I put The Fish and Duck Inn into my tomtom I think I can cross the railway line (looking both ways) walk a short way along the track and you will be there?’

‘No. Your tomtom is lying to you.  The Fish and Duck Inn fell into the river about six years ago, the road is a private road to the marina, it is on the wrong side of another river, and when you have crossed the nearest footbridge it is over a mile walk along a very rough track.  Although the good news is that you wouldn’t need to cross the rail way line.’

It might be a good idea to issue better instructions.  ‘Take the A10 towards Ely.  Take the right turn marked Little Thetford. Go through the village until you can go no further. Cross the railway tracks (looking both ways). Walk along the track until you see steps ahead of you.  Climb steps.  Go down other side and I will be there.

‘Oh Little Thetford I thought you said Thetford, I wondered how you’d got a boat into Thetford Forest’

‘If I look on Google Earth I can see The Whytces which runs into Main Street and then becomes Holt Fen is that the right or does Google Earth need updating?'

‘That’s probably right but I don’t know the street names’ 

‘I know where she is I’ll meet you at the railway crossing.  Bring flat shoes and a torch’ 

Clever girl.  I forgot about the practical things like sensible shoes and torches.

So they arrived and I managed to arrange glorious summer weather and we had a good evening. 

It seems that Google Earth thinks there is a Fish and Duck Inn in Little Thetford.  I did a bit of research and there was a Fish and Duck Inn listed until 1909 in Little Thetford but an old photo shows it sitting on the riverbank in what looks like the position of the more recently deceased Fish and Duck Inn not in the village centre where Google Earth thinks it is.  So the mystery of the missing pub remains.  There are plans to rebuild the Fish and Duck Inn at Popes Corner in the newly refurbished marina. Early this year residents at Popes Corner, many of whom had lived there for years, where turfed out with a months notice so the marina could be updated and given over to non-residential and higher priced boats.  I’m happy to say the riverbanks along the marina are still mainly empty and the marina is sparsely populated.

Geese and swans

I got a call from friends in London saying, because of the hot weather they would like to get out of town and come on the boat for the weekend.  That’s what I call fair weather friends. So I went back to Ely to empty and fill.  As I ambled through there were plenty of mooring spaces, I thought the one under the willow tree looked cool and shady.  Half an hour later when I left the pump-out station all the good spaces had been taken and I was left with a concrete mooring amongst the geese and tourists.  This morning I’m glad to be leaving I’m looking forward to a good nights sleep after the last two disturbed ones.  It wasn’t traffic, or drunken revellers or even the convention of Morris Dancers jingling their way around Ely that kept me awake.  It was the bloody geese.  Every night hundreds Canada Geese leave the fields and do a sail past through Ely, then in the early hours of the morning they start a noisy squabble with the very vocal pack of resident white geese. 

This morning I could hear bumping and splashing along the outside of the boat.  I looked out the side hatch and a swan was flapping about trying to drown something.  The only weapon I could find to throw at him was half a loaf of bread.  It hit him on the head and he let go of his victim and pursued the bread instead. The young Canada Goose that he’d been trying to kill scuttled off and the potential murderer ignored him and tucked into what should have been my breakfast.

Not lost

I took a long cut to the railway station in Ely to avoid walking through a herd of cows.  I didn’t get lost because

a)      I knew where I was

b)      I could see where I wanted to be, it was only a few hundred yards back to the main route along the flood bank

The only problem was I couldn’t see how to join a) to b).

Peering over the floodbanks

From Denver to Ely the river is wide, the flood banks high and the surrounding area flat yet I like this stretch of water.  I like the way the upper windows of isolated houses peer over the flood banks like nosy neighbours. I like the wild life. There are always grebes on the water, at this time of the year they are stuffing fish down the throats of their scrawny, grey off-spring.  I like the fact that each time I have come down here the weather has been good. I don’t like the stretch from Littleport to Ely, that is even more boring than the Middle Levels, although it is deep water so it is possible to put on the acceleration.  I must have almost reached 4mph at one point.

Early on Sunday morning the sun was hazy and a mist had formed on the field opposite. The bronze, barrel-chested bull stood looking across the river at me his legs and ‘bloody hell … look at that’ appendages submerged in the mist. Even though it was early the sun had warmth, I leant out of the open hatch to look at the fishes swimming in the clear water and got a face full of sticky cobwebs.  I don’t mind sharing my boat with spiders but I do wish they would be more considerate about where they weave their webs.

Monday in Ely I decide the boat needs its spring clean, it’s probably the 2012 spring clean its in need of.  The news I was polishing the boat must have reached Ely parks department because as soon as I’d done one side they sent along a man with a strimmer to flick grass and goo all over it.

Can I get there in time?

I’d phoned Salters Lode and learned the tide was due at 3.15pm and I calculated that the journey from March to Salters Lode would take five hours, no need for an early start I could leave at 9am and still be there in plenty of time. I pootled about a bit, then got the map out and it said six hours to Salters Lode.  I rang the lock-keeper at Marston Priory no reply.  It was now 9am, I wasn’t going to make it.  She rang back and said they would let through at Salters Lode until 4pm so if I set off now I would make it. So I set off in a hurry.

Beyond March I journeyed for miles with a herd of wind turbines looming over me and progress was reasonable. I arrived at Marston Priory waited for a boat in front to clear, through the lock. I still might make it. Onto Well Creek and then practically grind to a halt. Well Creek is shallow and clogged with weed. I crawl through Upwell so slowly that on the path alongside an old lady with a shopping trolley leaves me in her wake. I’m not going to make it. I stop at Upwell remove a shed load of weed from my prop, have a leisurely lunch and crawl on my way.  Stop to remove weed.  Get to Salters Lode.  Remove weed.

The next day it’s through Salters Lode on an incoming tide and an easy float down to Denver.  A bit different to the last time I was here. Stop at the pump- out station but being a limp wristed woman I can’t get the cap off because a strong wristed man has put it on tight.  Give it up as a bad job. Hope the one at Ely is working and there are some men (or stronger women than me) about to undo the cap.  Carry on upriver and moor somewhere miles from anywhere on a glorious evening and sit in the bow drinking the last of the wine.

Onwards to March

We leave Wansford on a still but chill morning.  The trees and reeds and bushes are a variety of greens interspersed with yellow iris and water lilies.  Elderflower and cow parsley cut swathes of white amongst the greenery and all the colours are doubled by their strong reflections in the calm water. At Orton lock a flock of yellow wagtails swoop and dart around the boats and wag yellow tails on the lock side.

We get to Stanground lock on time for our midday slot.  Then move slowly onto Whittlesey, the river is shallow, weedy and rubbish strewn.  A weed cutter appears suddenly in front of me as I am turning a bend and heading under a bridge and I nearly put paid to the good work he is doing. At the last minute we both manage evasive action and he survives to cut more weed.

At Whittlesey we make a meal of doing the slow stiff lock and stop beyond it to take a short break and make coffee before the final crawl to March.  A bit of black fluff peeping loudly shoots over the weir and gets lodged between the two boats.  It’s a tiny moorhen chick.  We retrieve it with a childs fishing net and I take it back to the other side of the lock.  I put it back in the water.  Then a girl I have sent scouting along the riverbank spots a moorhen with chicks so our chick, still peeping loudly, is once more ignominiously caught in the net and then dumped across from the river from the presumed mother.  It starts to swim across, gets tangled in weed and it looks as if it’s going back down the sluice gates but it frees itself and reaches the safety of the reeds.

We set off again.  After Whittelsey there is a wind farm and next to it a sun farm:  acres of solar panels pointing hopefully south.  The farmer must take a look at the weather forecast each day and think ‘I should have invested in wind’.

Through The Fens a row of pylons march across the fields into infinity.  Two terns follow me for a couple of miles diving into the wash from my propeller always coming up with a small silvery fish.  They leave me suddenly as I go under a low bridge. For the next two hours the only interesting thing I see is a large dead fish.

 

...and they're off

 ..and heading towards the Great Ouse.  I have a travelling companion as far as the Middle Levels who is going to see his mother in March.  It takes one hour by car to March and two days by boat so he can’t be in a desperate hurry to see his mother. The weather forecast is reasonable the sun is trying to come out but it’s not trying hard enough and is being beaten by the chill wind. The water lilies are out in force, big buttercup type water lilies and white frilly ones. The elderflowers and dog roses are abundant in the hedgerows, despite the chill factor it’s good to be out on the river.

At Cotterstock we are leaning on opposite lock gates waiting for the lock to fill when my boat pokes her nose in between us.  I hadn’t tied up properly and she’d escaped but being a good, well behaved sort of boat she hadn’t gone careering off down the side channel she’d just come round and stuck her bow in the lock entrance and waited for us to open the gate.  At subsequent locks I tied her extra carefully with reef notes and hitches and lots of wrapping around bollards and finished off with big girlie bow.  It took me hours to get it undone again.

Beyond Elton the water lilies had a long stemmed pink flower and swans and fluffy grey cygnets floated amongst them.  Swallows dived in front, behind and to the side of the boat chasing insects. The river is low and mud, dotted with holes, is exposed.  I wonder what lives in those holes. As we passed Nassington parachutists fell from the skies. 

After Yarwell lock I was admiring the rather smart houses that have been built alongside the river.  I was trying to peer in to see what soft furnishings they had and continued straight ahead in the direction of a moored boat, then I noticed that the river had turned off to the left and I was heading down a creek.  A bit of emergency reversing soon put me back on the right route.

We tied up at Wansford on a mooring where the agility of a mountain goat is required to get on and off the boat.  A boarding party arrived soon after we’d moored up demanded sandwiches and lager and when they had eaten their fill we all went to the nearest pub in the very attractive village and stayed there too long.