On the Move Again

Monday 8th January 2018

Happy New Year to all our followers.

We saw the New Year in up in Leeds, returning to the boat on Thursday 4th.

The trip back was a lot easier that anticipated as we have left the car in Leeds, returning to Burton by taxis and train, we had no issues at all and the guards on the train made a big fuss of Scruff which of course she enjoyed.

We spent the following day preparing for our departure on Saturday, the forecast was good so it should be easier manoeuvring the boat around the moorings.

However we awoke to pouring rain and as we were pulling out, howling winds, typical! 

Goodbye Pier 279

After a struggle we made it to the canal and moored up to empty the loo and get coal etc, we also collected our deposit for the key and found to our surprise that we had money left over on the electric meter, this was also refunded.

The weather brightened up but turned colder however we were well wrapped up and made our way down to Shobnall Felds and tied up on the moorings we stayed at in November. We had a walk into Burton to take on supplies ready for the rest of our journey.

Spot the animals and faces hidden in this tree!

Our plan for the next stage is to head east towards Nottingham, to Trent Lock,here we will turn north onto the Erewash Canal. We intend to spend several days exploring this relatively short route and look forward to reaching the terminus at Langley Mills, here we will be reunited with the Cromford Canal at the opposite end to the one we visited in November with Keith and Cheryl.

We had planned to move onto Willington on Sunday but decided to stay put and celebrate Lucia's birthday on the boat with the intention of moving on Monday morning but the canal had started to freeze overnight so we stayed put and will hopefully get underway on Tuesday.

We had a walk over to the ridge to the northwest of Burton and were rewarded with views across the town and the Trent Valley.

View over Burton - all the large buildings
 are the Molson Coors Brewery

We walked along the ridge dropping down into Horninglow, one feature of this area is the number of pubs, at the end of the rows terraced houses, most of which are still open. 

We returned to the boat via the towpath and look forward to being able to get underway tomorrow (hopefully).

Not sure why they have two sign posts?