Bryn Mawr;1298942 wrote: Go for it - I'm sure such a series would go down a bomb. With the inside story you could really make it work well.
A definite must before moving down from Nottingham would be to OK the itinerary with the lock keepers en-route and ask their advice. I'm not too sure that BW do a guide to the Trent but the TBA one is highly spoken of as accurate and up to date.
Rough plan is to move off the Nene at the end of May aiming for Barrow or Sileby on the Soar. Then, come mid/late June take her down to Keadby (with a possible side trip to Retford up the Chesterfield), up to Bramwith and down to Goole to get onto the Ouze and Derwent.
Depending on time we'll either stop when we're back onto the canal at Selby or carry on towards Leeds (we'll have about 25 days for this section).
After that we'll weekend her over the Leeds and Liverpool and see how it goes - return to base next year via Manchester and Birmingham.
Meeting up for a cruise through Nottingham sounds a grand idea - wine's in the fridge and food's on the table
Is that where you learnt your love of boats? She's a pretty as they come :-6
Guinevere's a fifty foot Pat Buckle and we wouldn't change her for the world :-
No it was dad who learnt his love of boats from us
Your Guinevere looks delightful, and she's a sensible length to cope with all the inland waterways. No wonder you disappear so often to grab a few days cruising on her !
Sounds like you've got your trip well organised! Had you thought of getting a depth gauge for the tidal waters? Although it is not essential, so long as you take the outside of any bends in the river you should be well away, oh yes you'll go quite fast with the tide !! Be prepared for about 15 knots !
When we were trading, there were several different days when the river would be in spate and whilst it was OK going upriver against the rip, returning back with the current was a different ball game as we had to move through the water faster than the river was running in order to keep steerage. Of course, this looked dramatic from the bank, seeing this large passenger vessel really tanking it up down the river ! On one of these occasions we received a letter from Hull, where there is a main Admiralty office that deals with commercial river craft ( it was obviously sent to all commercial passenger boat owners, but we think it was aimed at us – due to the timing of the letter), it would seem that somebody had seen the spectacle of our super-fast charter boat flying down the river at a hellova rate of knots and wrote a letter of concern to Hull. It was a warning to be mindful of speeding on the river! We did send a letter of explanation, and this was accepted.
Tamar Belle had a Gardner diesel in the engine room, capable of punching tides, as the boat spent a few years as an estuary ferry boat on the River Tamar at the beginning of her life in the 1930s, although the Gardner was not the original engine, it was in fact a lot more powerful than the original. The original engine had been replaced while she was doing service on the River Thames after the war. The Gardner was the Rolls Royce of marine engines, and drew many oohs and aahs from all who saw it sitting in the engine room, gleaming¦¦¦¦ and large!
Bye the way, Tamar Belle is a Dunkirk Little Ship, and proudly wears a brass plaque referring to her involvement with personally rescuing many hundreds of allied troops from the beaches of Dunkirk.
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