Up the Great Ouse to Bedford

Our last posting took the story to Holywell just short of St Ives (that's the Cambridgeshire one, not the Cornish one).  So last Saturday (25th August) we carried on through St Ives to Godmanchester:

Here we are approaching St Ives Lock.  This was our first 'proper' Ouse lock with 'V' gates one end and a guillotine at the other.

The water in the Ouse is pretty clear and clean and St Ives Lock had freshwater sponges below the lowest level of the lock.

St Ives waterfront is very attractive and one house shows a Dutch influence, perhaps a relic of the involvement of Dutch engineers in draining the fens in the 17th century.

The bridge at St Ives is one of four in the country that has a chapel on the bridge.  Can you name the others?  We've been to all of them by boat though one of them is not for cruising under.

At Houghton Lock we missed our chance to join the fray in stacking the lock.  Many of the Ouse locks have gates about 10 or 11 feet wide but once inside the lock there is a bay to one side as shown here.

Hartford Church on the edge of Huntingdon is right beside the water.

We did not stop in St Ives but carried on to Godmanchester shown here.  We went up the lock and moored in the backwater above the lock where there is plenty of room for visiting boats.  Although the weed is unsightly the old buildings lined up along the waterfront make a pleasing picture.

This gravestone is in the churchyard at Godmanchester.  It tells a sad story of a wife murdered by her husband.  It finishes with a warning to anyone contemplating a similar crime!





























On Sunday the weather forecast was for heavy rain from about 11 am.  So we set off before 9 and aimed to get someway upriver before the rain arrived.

Above Brampton Lock they are building a by pass on the A14 to avoid Huntingdon.  This view is taken through the skeleton of the new bridge.

In the rain as we cruised through St Neots we passed the massed boats assembled for the IWA (Inland Waterways Associatioin) Festival.  It was a shame for those attending that the weather for the weekend was so wet.  Fortunately things improved for the Bank Holiday Monday.

We had arranged to meet friends William and Daphne at Great Barford and they helped us through the lock there.  We had heard of a good mooring about a mile above Great Barford in a cut leading to an old lock that is no longer used.  It was a lovely remote spot, like having your own island!

Here we are with William and Daphne having lunch.  They are in the process of buying a narrowboat and there was much discussion of this and a detailed guided tour of Leo.

A short walk took us to the old lock festooned with ivy.  We then walked back to Great Barford where we enjoyed an evening meal together at the Anchor.  It was good to see William and Daphne who live in New Zealand, though we toured North Island there with them not five months ago!

On Tuesday we were back to just the two of us again and carried on our cruise to Bedford:

Bedford has an intriguing waterscape with two parallel rivers one at a higher level than the other with Bedford Lock connecting the two.  In the picture we are on the upper river heading upstream towards the town bridge.

The upper river is a great place for rowers, but fortunately we avoided any conflict with them.

While we were in Bedford we visited the Higgins Museum in the premises of the Castle Brewery.  It is a well organised and presented museum of all aspects of local history.  Some Saxon pottery was a revelation and did you know that the R101 airship (built locally) was full of intestines of oxen filled with gas!

Painted figures in St Paul's Church include musical angels above the choir stalls.

We found these strange faces in the shopping centre.  Quite intriguing.

There are some fine Victorian buildings along the waterfront.

Bedford is presently the navigable limit of the Great Ouse.  There are plans to build a new canal from Bedford to join the Grand Union Canal at Milton Keynes.  But it will be quite a few years, if ever, before this happens.  So we turned round and we are now heading back downstream.  Here are a few pictures of sights on the way back down:

We don't cruise that early in the morning, but this swan was still asleep.

One advantage of increasing years and having to get up in the night for a pee is seeing sights like this in the early morning.  This shot was taken out of the window just after sunrise.  There was quite a mist over the water but that hasn't really come out on the photo.

Coming out of Brampton Lock the navigable channel is sign posted through a tortuous narrow channel round an island.  The direct route is marked as 'no entry'.  Having spoken to other boaters we chanced the more direct route and it was fine.  No serious shallows, so we'll go this way in future.

This afternoon we had a walk into the village of Brampton and looked round St Mary's Church.  This has some medieval miserichords - the tip up seats often seen in churches.  On the reverse side of the seats are some wonderful carvings.  A joiner is shown left and someone perhaps preparing cloth on the right with a man and his wife harvesting perhaps in the middle.

And here is another one which seems to be about bringing in the harvest with threshing on the left.

We've enjoyed our Great Ouse cruise and aim to stop in different places on the way back downstream.  We have a social engagement next week and we have to reach a railway station by Tuesday.  So some planning is required, something we don't usually do these days!

Cambridge to St Ives via a Roman Canal

Here is an account of the last few days, starting last Sunday when Lucy and Becca joined us for the day to cruise from Clayhithe and Waterbeach into the centre of Cambridge.

Here are our guests onboard as we cruised down the last mile or so from Stourbridge Common into Cambridge.  By this point we had come through Bait's Bite Lock which we shared with an unusual wooden boat which was over 100 years old.  We took care not to crush it.

This is the Goldie Boat Club, the base of the Cambridge University Rowing team.  For a long way the Cam is lined with rowing clubs but we didn't see that many rowing boats on the water, presumably because it is the university holidays.

Here is Leo moored just below Jesus Lock which is effectively the end of the navigation during the summer.  Above here is the domain of the punts.  Lucy and Becca drove to Waterbeach to join us but we were able to walk from our mooring here to their house.

The punt traffic was dense on this summer Sunday.  Punters ranged from the professional ones taking tourists for a ride to those inexperienced punters trying it for the first time.  Quite a lot of chaos ensued but it is a good spectator sport. The picture is by Queen's College with the mathematical bridge in view.

You do see some strange sights in Cambridge, like this chap in a bin playing a guitar and singing to entertain the tourists.  We think the bin splits into two halves to let him out!

Lucy cooked for us in the evening and we were able to admire the work they have done in the house and especially the garden which they have transformed.  It was lovely to see them and well worth the extra licence fee to travel to Cambridge.

On Monday when Lucy and Becca had gone back to work, we decided to stay in Cambridge.  Most of the museums were shut on Monday but we did go in the Sedgewick Museum which is primarily full of fossils.  On one door was this sign.  The implication seems to be that the last incident was yesterday.  I did look round but I couldn't see a velociraptor!


























In the evening we went to the cinema and saw the new Mamma Mia film which we really enjoyed.  As we were on a 48 hour mooring, Tuesday was time to move and we cruised back down the River Cam to Reach Lode:

About 10 miles downstream from Cambridge, Reach Lode branches off to the right.  We soon came to the lock which took us up a few inches onto the Lode.  The Lodes here were built by the Romans for trading vessels, so we were now on a really old canal.

Here is the view looking back as we came out of the lock.  As you can see there is quite a bit of weed and this is not easy cruising.  Having come through the lock we passed a long line of moored boats and there is then a short stretch of visitor moorings just before the turn to Wicken Fen. 

From the mooring we did a good walk first following Wicken Lode to the National Trust centre at Wicken Fen and then back along footpaths on the top of dykes above the fen to the River Cam.  Wicken Lode is navigable but very narrow and you can turn a full sized boat at the end where there is a GOBA (Great Ouse Boating Association) mooring.  We have taken Leo there but did not go up there this time.  I haven't mentioned the picture.  There seems to be a bumper crop of sloes this year.  We'll have to set to and make some sloe gin!

At the junction with the Cam is this pub with a splendid name.  We had an evening drink sitting by the river.  Delightful.

On Wednesday we took Leo down Burwell Lode which she has never been down before.  This takes you about 4 miles to Burwell village and the very edge of the fens.  You can see hills in the distance.

Half a mile down Reach Lode we came to the junction where Burwell Lode branches off to the left.  Reach Lode extends to the right from the junction in a straight line for about 3 miles to the village of the same name.  More of that in a minute.

This cormorant was balancing on the wires drying its wings.

We think this is a home made hovercraft now lying neglected in a field.  I wonder if it worked.

And this is the end of Burwell Lode with the EA mooring on the right.  But first you have to turn round.  At the end is a T junction.  We put the bow right and spun round into the left branch.  To be frank, we made a bit of a hash of it and finished up with Ian on the tiller in the willow tree and Helen pushing the bow round with the pole.  It is probably better to put the bow left.  We later found a few boats moored permanently up the right hand branch.

We were moored soon after 10 o'clock and we took the bikes out to explore.  First we had a look round St. Mary's Church in Burwell.  High up in the roof are some wonderful 15th century carvings.  These are supposed to be elephants but it is pretty clear that the wood carvers had never seen an elephant.

And we think these were meant to be camels!

Burwell had a castle built to repel insurrection by Geoffrey de Mandeville in the 12th century.  While it was still being built Geoffrey attacked, was killed in the attempt and the rebellion collapsed.  So the castle was never finished but you can still trace ramparts and the moat as this picture shows.

We cycled from Burwell to Reach and this photo is of the end of Reach Lode.  We did not bring Leo down here because we were unsure that we could turn round.  We spoke to Pat and Tracy on the blue boat, Tilley which had turned.  They are only 42 foot long, we are 57 feet.  Given their difficulties with shallow water and trees, we think we'll leave this one until the EA have done some dredging.

Leaving the village of Reach after lunch at the pub there, we followed the Devil's Dyke.  This Roman embankment is still really impressive running for 11km away from the Lode.  It has a high embankment with a deep ditch and was built for defence.  It is not as well known as Hadrian's Wall but it is impressive.

After our cycling day we set off on Thursday back up the Lodes and the Cam to reach Pope's Corner where we turned left to head up the Great Ouse once more.

Near the confluence of the Cam and the Ouse there were hundreds of geese on the washlands where the rivers overflow in times of flood.

Here is Leo passing the Fish and Duck Marina and approaching Pope's Corner.  Where the white signs are in the distance we turned left onto what here is called the Old West River which is one of the courses of the Great Ouse.

We've seen quite a few terns lately.  This one was clearly looking into the water ready to dive for a fish.

Above the Lazy Otter pub and marina the river became quite narrow and weedy as it threaded between trees.  The river here  has quite a different character to the wide lower reaches of the river.

We moored on Thursday night near Twenty Pence bridge and marina and carried on up river on Friday.  One stretch was absolutely covered in deep duckweed.  It was like taking the boat across a lawn.  Fortunately duckweed does not seem to give the propellor much problem.

Here's the view behind us with the duckweed doing its best to cover our traces.

Finally on Friday we reached Hermitage Lock which is about 40 miles from Denver without a lock in between.  Oddly Hermitage Lock took us up onto tidal water and back onto the main River Great Ouse.  The tidal river flows along the perfectly straight New Bedford River for 20 miles in a shortcut to Denver.  The New Bedford was a key element in the 17th century replumbing of the Fens to drain them for farmland.

Another bird we've seen quite a lot lately is the Little Egret and this one was paddling along in the tidal mud at the side of the channel.  Until we saw this one out of the water we hadn't realised they have black legs but yellow feet.  How odd!

We stopped briefly on the tidal section at Westview Marina at Earith to buy milk and empty the toilet.  Just over 2 miles from Hermitage Lock we reached Brownshill Staunch where the lock took us finally up and away from tidal water.  The picture is of Leo on the floating pontoon waiting for the lock.  The spire in the distance is St. Mary's at Bluntisham.

We moored on Friday evening at Holywell which is a delightful village with lots of old and some thatched cottages.  At first we stopped on the GOBA mooring but this was too shallow and awkward so we moved later to the public mooring conveniently outside the Old Ferry Boat Inn which claims to have served ale since AD560!  It certainly had well kept Speckled Hen to accompany our evening meal.

Just below the churchyard of St. John's church is the Holy Well that gives the village its name.  It is in fact a spring rather than a well of crystal clear water that then feeds a small garden below.  The picture was taken right into the sun so I'm sorry about the white splodges on the photo.

Today we've come up 4 locks and are moored tonight at Godmanchester.  But more about that in our next posting. 

What I haven't mentioned is a couple of other wildlife highlights.  On the Old West River we were followed for a while by a grey seal.  Unfortunately the poor creature had a fish lure attached to a line with the hook embedded near its left eye.  We phoned the RSPCA who were aware of the seal and were hoping to catch it and remove the hook.  It didn't in fact seem to be unduly troubled by its appendage and has been seen as far away as Denver.

Second wildlife highlight was seeing a couple of otters, one swimming and one on land on the Great Ouse above Brownshill Staunch.  Do keep an eye open for them if you pass this way.