I am Linda and along with my husband Richard and our dog Muffin we enjoy our summers on the UK's canal system

Sunday 1 July 2012

Saturday 30th June

Richard set off while I was in the shower – this isn’t an unusual occurrence however as I was drying my hair we were winding round a village called Ranby, it just seemed a bit surreal! Apparently the Randy Bends were a real problem for boatmen and their horses in the past. We passed Osberton Hall early this morning. The guide book had said all sorts of nice things about this hall that was built in 1806 by James Wyatt, but we couldn’t see anything. However we did see the stables with their clock tower though the whole thing is covered in scaffolding and wouldn’t have taken a good photo :-( We stopped in Worksop to see what the town was like – it was market day and there were certainly a lot of stalls right up the middle of the main shopping street. As we approached the Town Lock we went under the Straddle Warehouse which was once owned by Pickfords. Overhead is a trapdoor where goods were hoisted and lowered to waiting boats. We had quite an audience watching as we went through the lock – I was steering and went in perfectly! Our next stop was a few locks down where there is a Sainsburys very close to the canal.

Our destination for the night was Shireoaks Marina. We had no idea what we would find as the book says that it was dug out on the site of an abandoned colliery. The entrance was very tight with a tiny bridge to go under but once in we were pleasantly surprised to find a nice safe haven. We dumped rubbish and toilet on one side of the marina then went across to where there are official BW visitors moorings with water and electricity. The only drawback was that someone had spilt diesel in the water and the smell wasn’t very nice.

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