Monday 12th July - Little Thetford to Ely
Today we have cruised in from our overnight mooring and found a spot to moor in Ely just before the Cutter Pub. We joined Laura, Amy and the twins for lunch at The Prince Albert, then Dave and Amy went and did some shopping in Tesco’s.
Tuesday 13th July - Ely
Today we are going to look after the babies by ourselves whilst the girls go for a long walk by themselves. So after making sure they were fed and changed we took them for a walk to the golf course and back through Ely. A lovely afternoon, topped off with a refreshing drink in the Cutter Inn before returning to the boat.
Wednesday 14th July - Ely to Little Ouse GOBA moorings.
Today we resume our exploration of the rivers off the Great Ouse, and we visit The Little Ouse. Unfortunately it was very cold and windy for most of the journey but we made it safely to the GOBA moorings near Wilton Bridge. These moorings are the equivalent to wild mooring on a canal, you need to use mooring pins and in our case a gangplank to get safely on and off the boat. We went for a walk along the raised bank, but it was cut short by Toby rolling in a very fresh and very smelly cowpat!
We decided to take Toby to the river and throw a ball for him to retrieve, hopefully washing most of the cow dung off him before allowing him back on the boat. However, he had great difficulty actually getting the ball in his mouth, and ended up across the other side of the river still chasing the ball and gulping large quantities of water at the same time. So I stripped off trousers, watches, shoes and swam out to rescue him, I collected the ball and pushed him back to Dave on our river bank. Fortunately neither of us suffered any ill effects and we both went back to the boat and had warm showers.
17 miles, 0 locks, 4 hrs 18 mins.
Thursday 15th July - GOBA Moorings to Brandon Lock
We left our mooring and continued on towards Brandon Lock. On the way we came through the Little Ouse Sluice Gate. The gate is kept open except during flood conditions, we were able to pass through with no problems.
We moored for the night at the visitor moorings just before Brandon Lock, the lock is only 45ft and we are too long to use it. From the 1700s the navigation on the Little Ouse was maintained by the building of staunches, primitive locks to bypass weirs. These generally raised the water level upstream allowing a consistent water depth for boats. Now there is only one lock, close to Brandon Leisure Centre that raises the water level by about one metre allowing boats of less than 45ft to pass through to moorings in the town upstream of the road bridge. From there it is no longer under the jurisdiction of the Environment Agency and deemed to be the end of navigation.
We went for a walk along the bank of the river to Santon Downland, this photo is the bridge that we crossed over the river at the midpoint of our walk. The path was a little overgrown, but it was a delightful walk.
Once we had crossed over the bridge, we walked through Santon Downland and then through Thetford Forest back into Brandon. Towards the end of the walk it began to drizzle so back to the boat and a nice cup of tea!
5.5 miles, 0 locks, 1 hr 48 mins.
Friday 16th July - Brandon Lock to Littleport Visitor Moorings
After a very pleasant evening at Brandon, Dave turned the boat round in front of the new fish pass. It has only been open a few weeks and it is there to improve fish passage on the Little Ouse River for both migratory species and coarse species, connecting them to important habitats.
As we were cruising along The Little Ouse I was able to capture a heron in flight, it had been flying in front of the boat for about 10 minutes!
We stopped at the junction of the Little Ouse with the Great Ouse and had lunch at the Ship Inn, very pleasant indeed! The mooring we had was right under the A10 so very noisy, so we moved on, but moorings were difficult to come by, lots of white cruisers mooring irresponsibly and taking up too much space. We eventually got to The Swan on the River EA Moorings and managed to get two cruisers to move up, thereby creating enough space for our 57ft! By the end of the evening, cruisers were mooring all over the place, made us think of Gaios in Paxos in high summer!
17.25 miles, 5 hrs 24 mins.
Saturday 17th July - Littleport Visitor Moorings
Today we have spent the afternoon helping Amy out with the twins whilst she went and had her second vaccine, it meant a bit of juggling but we eventually ended up with the car in the right place and had a lovely afternoon. Sunset in the evening was delightful!
Sunday 18th July - Littleport to Queen Adelaide
Today we left Littleport and moved the boat back to Queen Adelaide, Dave had to drive the car and I drove the boat. He was able to stop on route and take these photos of Ella cruising between these two points on the river.
When we got to Queen Adelaide we moored up, packed our bags for three days down in the south to help look after Alba, and set off for Annie and Pete’s for a lovely bbq and playing with Alba.
3 miles, 0 locks, 0 hrs 45 mins.
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