“Time and tide wait for no man”, but we had to wait!
Mark at Keadby had written down the times of the flood at Torksey for the next few days, which was very handy. It turns out today was the best timed flood for the next week. They were either getting too late in the day to arrive in day light, or we’d be starting at 05.10! Although Mark had suggested asking what the fresh reading was over the weir at Cromwell, as if it wasn’t too much then we could get away with leaving earlier on in the day and not having to fight the water coming downstream too much.
Torksey pontoon
The Lockie at Cromwell when asked about the fresh didn’t comment. He suggested leaving at 2pm, however later on he left a message saying he’d looked at the wrong chart, 3.30pm is what he should have told us. So what to do with ourselves till then?
Torksey Castle and Church from the river bank
So we went to find Torksey Castle. Two C&RT employees were trying to pull the worst of the branches blocking the lock to the side from where it could be removed. With their grapple hooks they weren’t going to get very far quicky. Heading towards the village you get a little glimpse of the ruin of Torksey Castle, but that was all. It is on private land and on the Buildings at Risk List, reading up on it earlier we knew there was little chance of getting close, but as you do when killing time we went to prove the websites wrong. The house was built in the mid 16th Century and was lived in for not quite 100 years, as in 1645 it fell victim to the English Civil War. It was set alight by Royalists leaving not much of the original structure. The house was never restored, just left to crumble with locals pilfering building materials. Part of the ruins were buried in the 1961 scheme of flood banks. The only work done on the house has been by English Heritage under pinning it in the 1990’s. We walked round the village and had a look at the church before returning to Lillian to get some Blackberry picking containers.
Today’s dredger!
By now there were four C&RT employees, a small rowing boat and a van. The chaps in the boat would attach the grapple hook to large chuncks, then they pulled using the van. This kind of worked. We did wonder how they would tackle with the dead sheep.
Torksey lock has a thing about tea pots.
Back out walking we drew a blank on the blackberry front on the way to the river, but got a better view of the Castle. So we then walked up to the lock and along the towpath where several areas produced juicy berries for us. More boats had joined the queue above the lock.
The final clearing of the lock mouth consisted of them flushing water out through the lock. This worked, although it was getting caught on the boats that had now moored behind us. Amongst the debris were still large chunks of trees and a dead deer. All of this was heading into the river and the flood was on it’s way. We decided to back out onto the river as soon as we could so as to avoid having to share our journey with all the detritus. The tide was just still going out and much of the stuff had disappeared.
Walking on water
Decaying sunken barge
The river much narrower and more windy than yesterday was shallow, so it was good we had the charts. Large shoals and gravel have you zigzagging your way round them. Warning signs for sunken islands are quite common, Butlers Island was quite visible and the herons stood on water giving away how far out the shallows were. At Dunham there is a floating pontoon with 72hr moorings, but we didn’t feel the need for a rest.
At Fledborough Viaduct we followed the instructions to go under the ‘England’ graffiti from our chart. Livestock were happily paddling on the muddy banks and huge flocks of geese were gathering. Our progress wasn’t as quick as yesterday as the tide coming in was hardly noticeable. As we approached Cromwell Lock we rang ahead to have the lock prepared for us, the VHF radio soon squawked with a cruiser wanting the same, they shortly came into view behind us silhouetted in the setting sun.
Weir to the left with it’s foam, lock to the right
Me and blue risers don’t mix well!
The huge black weir looked disturbing producing large amounts of foam that drifted like icebergs. The lock light changed to green and we entered pulling into the side with our centre rope. The long blue risers are back on the lock walls and I did not want to be dealing with one of those just yet! We moored against a lower section of wall in the now failing sun, the cruiser had beaten us to what was left of the pontoon.
Sunset Cruise
1 lock, 16.44 miles, 4 men and 1 boat, 12oz blackberries, 12 sausage rolls cooked, 2 sausage rolls for pudding!
NB Lillyanne 