Well it is the beginning of the 2002 season and although we have had many a day trip on the QE2 we have not had a night away since last November which was a stay over at the Black Horse at Rawcliffe Bridge. We enjoyed the night so much even though the temperature during the night dropped to nearly freezing (we did not notice this inside the boat) that we wanted to do it again.

I had to have the thermocouple replaced on the Alde central heating boiler as the pilot light was doing a nice impression of the Hokey Cokey - in - out etc. It took a while to get someone out to Bramwith to do it. I suppose as the season gets going everyone is busy.

Gwyn's father, Trevor, also bought a narrowboat at the back end of last year a 40' trad stern called the Emily Jay.

He bought it from Northern Narrowboats the same place we bought the QE2 and he has it moored at Blue Water Marina in Thorne. This is about a 90 minute trip from Bramwith by boat.

Anyway, they sailed up to Bramwith to meet us. The picture above is as they arrived at Bramwith having just passed through the lock. He brought with him Jenny's cousins Ben and Ellie for their first trip on a Narrowboat.

So the 2 boats and 8 people set of in the bright sunshine for Rawcliffe Bridge.

British Waterways have dug out a large mooring facility at Rawcliffe Bridge and as you can see there is room for loads of boats so we thought we would moor up there. The pontoons are very high above the water and I had to lift the fenders to stop the boat rubbing against the pontoon. I also had to use a mooring stake at the bow as the mooring ring provided was about 8 feet into the pontoon and to put a bow rope to it meant the rope was right across where you would get on and off the boat. Very dangerous in the dark!

The Black Horse is on the side of the canal just next to these moorings. It does have 3 or 4 moorings outside but they can fill up early on a Saturday. On the other side of the Canal is a Croda factory and I'm told the Fire authorities are not happy about boats mooring at the new moorings in case of an explosion at the factory. I don't know how true this is.

More