In which we 'Soar' south, sail with spiders, scratch our paintwork and get stuck in the shallows.

Well, it’s been a red hot minute week month heatwave indeterminate amount of time. I left you, dear reader, on the upper reaches of the Grand Union Leicester Line on the River Soar, ensconced at Red Hill Marina while I recovered from my afore-posted lock tumble and the oppressive heat. The heat has continued, and so have we, heading south on 4 July and fetching up at a charming little spot called Zouch (pronounced ‘Zotch’. Don’t ask me why). While we originally planned to spend a good chunk of time here and only move when we needed more water, we got itchy feet after a few days and continued on. Part of this may have been due to the terrifying scraping sounds you tend to get moored up beside concrete edges, no matter how good your fenders… like nails on a chalkboard!

The other reason was a combination of anxiety (from me) over how long it might actually take to get closer to Oxford (I’m heading off to Oxonmoot¹ in early September, whoo hoo!) and looming warnings about the potential low water stoppages that brought huge swathes of the network grinding (pun intended) to a halt last summer/autumn. As July continued dry and hot, boaters everywhere were becoming more and more nervous.

At first we didn’t feel too stressed. A more pressing matter, at least for this arachnophobe, was the incessant presence of spiders. I’d read somewhere that bugs and spiders were more prevalent on river navigations – it certainly seemed feasible on the Soar. They are everywhere. On the plus side, they’re much, much smaller than the ones I dread so much at home in Brisvegas… where an Aussie hunstman the size of my hand will send me screaming into the void, these ones are teensy and produce merely a series of irritated snorts and swats. The biggest I’ve encountered was about dessert-spoon sized (and I made long-suffering husband deal with that one). The vast majority are about pin head size and I soon realised to my relief that, in fact, I could coexist with them quite well (as long as they didn’t crawl on me, which earned them a swift termination). Besides, they help keep down the flies, which are at epidemic proportions this summer, according to the various boater social groups I follow.

As we continued, we discovered once again that it’s not always easy to find a moorable spot on river navigations, let alone one with somewhere nearby to park our faithful Nelson. Our pre-departure reconnoitre had discovered a particularly pleasant spot at Barrow-upon-Soar², and we hung out there for another few days (including the next heatwave). But along with the increasing heat and creepy-crawlies, the warning signs of drought were growing apace. So we set off again, heading for another mid-length stop before Leicester. Filling up as we left, we met a charming solo boater, originally from Germany, who we later encountered at regular intervals through this section… one might say passing like ships in the night (another bad pun, sorry). It’s always great to have a skilled boater to share locks with, so when we caught up near Mountsorrel we mined her knowledge of the network too³, before she moored up and we forged on.

Not all the good advice in the world can prevent calamity when it comes in the form of overhanging foliage, though. We were brought undone by the aptly named River Wreake (a small subsection of the navigation). I was steering – or trying to – through a twisty, narrow, overgrown channel. Ducking to avoid a faceful of willow branches (and probably more spiders) I inadvertently loosed my grip on the tiller and failed to notice our altered trajectory. Desperate shouts from husband in the well deck sharpened my senses (too late) and we headed directly into another, much solider, much bushier tree encroaching far into the cut. He ducked, I ducked again, but poor Flow had nowhere to go as we scraped painfully free. Surveying the damage later we found more than a few scratches 😦 mostly light surface damage, we hope. We’d also bent a clothes rack, ripped the cable off our solar fairy lights, broke our bird feeder and filled the well deck with leaves an inch deep. Alas. Could have been much worse though!⁴ And indeed… rather worse was to come.

In the end we only overnighted at our next stop, Syston. Yes, the mooring was good and there was ample parking nearby – but at the cost of a noisy pub, busy towpath and no sunshine for our solar panels. So onward we went, hoping to find a spot at the limited moorings in central Leicester. And before long, the real fun started…

Weeds. Reeds. Silt. Some shallow pounds. Yet more weeds. We hadn’t made it more than a few miles/locks before we had to pause to clear the prop of a squelchy lump of unpleasant stuff. Noticing piles beside every lock we went through suggested that we weren’t the only people finding it soupy going. It was depressing to see how much man-made rubbish wound up in the cut through the more populated areas as well; it made things look and feel (and sometimes smell) much seedier. We’d heard that one needed caution when mooring in Leicester, so we were really keen on the designated short term CRT moorings at Friar’s Mill or Castle Gardens. Much to our relief, though the Mill was full there was plenty of room on the Mile Straight⁵. While it was a little noisy (especially because the World Cup was on), it was great to be close to the city. We did a little sightseeing, found a great local pizza joint and swan-watched.

But all good things come to an end, and we had to move on – all the more urgently as further notifications kept popping up from CRT about low water restrictions. We discovered the upcoming portion of cut included a particularly shallow stretch, and navigation through Locks 38-31 would be off limits except between 10am and 3pm.⁶ Carefully checking the Nicholson, we decided to cruise to just before the trouble spot, fetching up at Aylestone Meadows. We paused for a few days, to see how things were going post-river (as by this point the River Soar leaves the navigation for good, and boaters are back on the Grand Union Leicester Line proper). While we were there we met up with not only our knowledgeable friend from Barrow, but made another couple of new friends who moored up next to us with the same idea. Hearing more alarming news about dropping water levels galvanised us all to move on together in a small flotilla of four, so we could share the locks and save water.

Our beautiful plan began well, but was severely challenged by the incredibly low water in some of the pounds (a pound is the bit of the canal between locks). We all grounded at least two or three times as we struggled onward. Some of the bends had overgrowth that made the Wreake look tame. And then there were the prop-loads of debris… we all ended up with at least one pause to dive into the weed hatch; three times for us, including one where we simply lost propulsion power mid-canal and had to hope no one needed to pass while we (and I mean husband) had to saw off what ended up to be an insulated cable and a bungee cord twined with weeds and reed.

To add injury to insult, during one of our groundings, it was husband’s turn to fall into the cut. We were well stuck, with me trying to reverse and manoeuver the stern free and him pushing with boat pole, to no avail. So thinking it might be better to pull the boat free with the sidelines, the brave soul estimated the distance to the towpath from the bow and launched himself into the air… landing about six inches short, body-slamming the armco piling and sliding down the side of the bank. The good part of water shortage meant that he only wet his legs to mid calf. Unfortunately, his boat keys, with their large cork float, were in his pocket, and caused a tremendously painful impact to one hip and thigh. (Between my recuperating MCL and his new array of bruises, there’s been a lot of hobbling and groaning on Flow the last couple weeks).

With one of our company stuck behind with prop problems and two pushing ahead, we made it to just past Lock 32 and called it a day (actually two days, in the end, as not only did I have to Uber back to collect Nelson and run errands, we had a scheduled trip back to Rugby next day for medical appointments). Heading on, we decided to only tackle a short stretch, getting past Lock 30, topping up the water and pausing at the CRT 2 day moorings at Kilby Bridge to nurse our bruises a bit more. To our delight, the neighbouring boater was a fellow Aussie; we enjoyed sitting on the towpath yarning away with a refreshing drink. It was a good place to pause overnight, as it turned out, because there were many more challenges to come before we could escape the shallows of the Leicester Line…

...to be continued...

1. The annual Tolkien Society conference. Fantasy Nerd Heaven. ↩︎
2. So many English towns are ‘upon’ something! We’d already noticed this with the Trent, the Avon, etc, etc. This particular spot ‘upon’ has a couple of great pubs, a super cafe, and a quirky Indian restaurant all within walking distance, even with crutches. ↩︎
3. Our friend also is a blogger! We make a couple appearances in her updates 🙂 ↩︎
4. We were able to fix the bird feeder, the clothes rack may be salvagable, the lights were a cheapie find anyway so easily replaced… and since then we have had another similar scrape on the other side, which I wasn’t steering for… so at least we are both responsible for poor Flow‘s cosmetic woes now. ↩︎
5. This is a straight, canal-like cut which bypasses the River Soar proper. Originally built to help prevent flooding in the city of Leicester, it also now makes a reliable mooring spot for fraught boaters. ↩︎
6. Not that all boaters pay attention to this, sadly. Leading to more draconian measures ahead… ↩︎