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.