I left the wide expanse of the River Trent and moored up in the basin just
below Trent Lock. I noted as I climbed the steps up to the lock, that I'd need my
water conservation key. It's also known as a handcuff key and is used to release
the lock paddles, so vandals can't drain the canal of its precious water.
The Erewash Canal was built towards the end of the 18th century and is 11 3/4 miles
in length. It has a total of 15 locks and is suitable for
boats up to 72 foot in length and 10 foot 6 inches in width. The canal travels
north through the popular Long Eaton area to Sandiacre, where I was to moor
up for the night. The northernmost section of the canal continues after
Ilkeston. It's rural and has attractive surroundings. As the canal curves round
between the towns of Eastwood and Heanor, it terminates at the Great Northern
Basin at Langley Mill. Right above Trent Lock are a small gathering of boat yards
and a Canal & River Trust sanitary and water point. Make sure you fill up with
water at lock one because there isn't another water tap right until Langley
Mill, which is right at the very end. So I'm full up, the day has actually turned out
to be quite nice. Nice and sunny, it's a bit warm.
I've been warned that certain patches of the canal are quite shallow,
some have got lots of weeds but we'll see how we go. As you travel north, the
canals off-side is lined with well-kept houseboats, of all different
sizes and shapes.
I think this journey is gonna take a bit of time today, because I always try and
go tick over speed when going past people. Again there's nothing worse than
boats zooming past and everything falling out and around you, inside the boat. So
I'm going nice and slow but there are boats moored along the side, as far as
the eye can see!
[Alarm Announcement] Warning! You should not be in this area. Please leave now!
Heading up through Long Eaton, its historical past is clear to see.
Lace-making and railway wagon manufacturing, dominated the town's
population and both used the large railway yard just north of the town. The
canal straightens out here and lots of mooring points available on the town
side of the cut. I've had a couple of people look quite shocked, when I've
gone past. I'm like, what's wrong with the boat, is there things sticking
out or something and then one person said "blimey I've seen two boats in one
day". So I think the Erewash Canals a bit of a quiet canal. Someone even came
to the end of their garden just to watch me go past and said that they haven't
seen another boat all day. Now, when I came through the the lock at
Trent Lock there was one boat there but to be fair, I haven't seen any more boats.
The Long Eaton Lock sits alongside a huge expanse of playing fields called
West Park. A number of murals have been painted on many of the parks otherwise,
plain brick walls. This one showcasing the canal alongside, At Sandiacre Lock
just north of Long Eaton, there are the only surviving lockside cottages left on
the canal. The Erewash Canal Preservation and Development Association
have leased the cottages from the Canal & River Trust. The cottages are
maintained by volunteers, with the aim to keep them as historically accurate as
possible. There's a link to their website in the description below. Next to the
cottages is where the Erewash and the Derby Canal once joined. The Derby and
Sandiacre Trust are trying to raise funds to restore the former canal. If restored,
it would create a cruising ring and reconnect the city of Derby, to the
National canal network. A link to the Trust's website, is also in the
description below. As there's limited metal shuttering to the side of the
canals edge, when in built-up areas, I try to moor up on bollards, rather than using
mooring pins. Just north of Long Eaton is the small town of Sandiacre, where there's
a cluster of shops and facilities. This is Sandiacre. I moored up here last night.
a couple of mooring spots, enough for probably about three boats I'd say. I saw
one boat moving all day yesterday, very, very quiet canal, some of the people
on Twitter had mentioned that they couldn't get up the canal because of
weeds but I think that was different because a
couple of weeks ago, there was quite a big festival, right at the top of the
Erewash Canal for the Inland Waterways Association. So I think they might've
either, dredged the canal, cleared it with weeds or the sheer volume of boats,
100-plus boats cleared it, you know for us. So, a bit of a noisy night, quite a
lot of traffic, quite a lot of people yelling and screaming, sirens that sort
of thing. So I'm a little bit tired today but I'm up nice and early and onward I
go.
So that was a bit of an interesting conversation I just had. Someone at the
end of their house, just down the cut here, end of their garden. They've got a
cruiser and as I was going past, they asked "oh you've got a hole in the front
of your hull" like really concerned. And I was like, Oh my goodness, what's happened, have I
bashed into something and then he sort of pointed where it was. Obviously I'm
steering so I couldn't stop and look and he described what it was "It's like
a hoop". Oh okay. {laugh} Phew, that's actually the vent for the gas
locker, so it's built into the frame, so nothing to worry about.
But it gave me a couple of seconds of panic then, I thought oh my
gosh, I'm gonna sink right out into the countryside north of Sandiacre, but no,
it's fine, it's built into the hull! I can see this is going to be a little
bit of a troublesome lock because the top gates keep swinging open in the wind.
So in this instance, I'm going to try and close them as much as I can and then
start releasing the water from the bottom gates, ever so slightly, which will
cause a bit of a pull on the water and hopefully force the gates to close. But
I've closed both of them now and they've both blown open. As soon as I've got to
the other side, the other ones blown open so, look this one's already on its way
again! [Grr]
That's the sort of things I really enjoy. I'm sat here waiting for a lock to fill
up and someone walking his dog along the towpath. We cropped up a conversation and
started talking about my solar panels. They will be in a much more detailed
video later on when I get to finalising the electrics cupboard, so don't worry
about that. I know people can see them on the roof and I've had lots of comments,
so there is a video on its way. But it was nice being able to chat to him about
voltage drop over distances of cabling, and all that sort of stuff. So he knew
what he was talking about and those sorts of conversations don't really
happen. If you're walking along the towpath,
and someone else is walking along the towpath, you might say morning, or hello,
or hi dog and give it a pat but you wouldn't spark up a conversation and
that's something I'm really noticing when you're on a boat, everyone wants to
stop and chat.
With me navigating locks on my own, I'm trying to make it a little bit easier
for myself. On this lock, I've opened to the ground paddle and the gate paddle,
but only on one side. It reduces the risk factor because I don't have to walk
across the gate to open the other side and then back again to close them and
because I'm on my own, in the middle of nowhere, I could slip off and fall into
the lock and no one would even know I was there for hours on end. So just being
sensible, I'm not in a rush, although it is starting to rain now, so I might moor
up soon and just take it easy through the locks and make it easy as possible.
It was hard work to turn every corner and be confronted with yet another lock
but as rain showers passed overhead, I carried on up to the east of Ilkeston,
where I decided enough was enough and stopped for the day. I had already moored
up for the night. It was chucking it down with rain, I was
all wet and damp, so I moored up and everything was fine. A nice cup of
tea, everything's dried off and then I
started looking out the window and I thought well this is an absolutely
glorious evening, it'd be such a shame to not use the the lovely weather to
navigate a bit more of the canal. Where I was, there was a bit of a hum from a
building, like a sound hum, which is a little bit annoying. There was
obviously some, a workshop or something that was nearby and also, every time I
moved, the television signal ever so slightly went out and every time I moved
in the boat because there were trees in the way, so I thought well, nice
evening, let's keep going. At one point I thought to myself am I cruising through
the Florida Everglades?? Just a couple of weeds!
Well this evenings turn out to be really nice. Nice low setting sun, nice and quiet,
I don't think there'll be any rain anymore, so I should have
a nice quiet night.
The evenings warm sun was beautiful but I let it get the better of me, as I
traveled a little too long in the day and it very quickly became dark and then
I ran into trouble. It's bright and early on what, day three of my journey up the
Erewash Canal. I did this part of the canal last night
and I moored up. I wanted to moor up on a nice straight bit.
I knew that I would have to use mooring pins. It was getting dark, I was really
damp after a days raining and I moored up. Could I get the pins in? Oh gosh, because
the path here is so well made, I just couldn't get them in. There were stones,
there was rubble, there was great big boulders, so I had to give up because the
light was fading fast, and I had to reverse all the way down this bit and
moor up on an end bay, of what was a lock landing. That's not
advisable, but considering I saw two boats yesterday and I've seen nothing
yet today and one boat the day before, I thought well, I'll chance it. There's
hardly going to be any traffic and the lock is in exactly the same place and
gates are in the same position as they were last night. So I know no one's come
down. So I thought I'd get up nice and early this morning
and keep going. I'm going to go up to Eastwood which is Langley Mill Lock,
there's facilities up there, I'll have a look around see what's available and
then I'll turn around and aim to go down the complete Erewash, right the way back
to Trent Lock today, hopefully. My calculations are, it'll take around
about six or seven hours, so it's a long day and hopefully because there's no
traffic, a load of the locks will be in my favour, because I left them in that way
yesterday, so we'll see.
Some of the bridges on the Erewash are quite low.
Bridge 27 up near Eastwood, is exceedingly low. So I had to take it
really slow, just to make sure that it didn't knock my solar panels off.
I had completed all but one lock and wanted to get to the end of the canal
and all the way back to the River Trent in one day, without stopping. At the end
of the Erewash Canal is the Great Northern Basin. Narrowboats lining its
edges and there's a boatyard here and a small area to turn around. There's
supposed to be a water and sanitation point here but all I could find is this
small hut, with what looked like an outside tap. No signs indicating if I was
correct however. The basin is just to the west of Eastwood and there are plenty of
large supermarkets and restaurants, just a few minutes walk from the canal. So I've
never done this before. I've watched other people do it but I've never done
it. I'm right at the very, very end of the Erewash Canal up at Langley Mill. There's one
final lock there, that was in my favour and then there's a turning circle in
the basin, but it's early on a Sunday morning, quite early, and the last thing I
wanted to do is lots of clanging of lock gates and ratchets and me
motoring back and forth to turn around, and I didn't really want to wake
everyone up, because I'm sure lots of people are having a nice lie in. So this
morning, I've decided to tie some ropes together and pull Alice around.
And that's worked quite nicely, I'm back in the right direction now, so I'll undo
this rope, on the centre-line and off I go. I won't have any propellers clogged up
in weeds and I certainly won't have a bow thruster tube full of debris. So
that's worked well, I might do that again in the future. So, that was the Erewash
Canal. A very quiet canal, that passes through both urban and picturesque
countryside. I didn't have any problems with weeds and all the locks and bridges
were in good working order. I was limited to where I could moor up overnight and
on the edges of some of the urban areas, the locals look like they could cause a
bit of bother, so two of the three nights, I kept to the rural countryside, where
everyone was pleasant enough. It was hard work on my own but as the canal is so
unused, 13 of the 15 locks I needed to navigate back, were still in my favour,
which was nice! Don't forget to click the Thumbs Up if you
like this episode and I love reading and replying to your comments. Until next
time, see you later.
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