Wednesday 28th June

Up by 7am ready to catch the tide. Heard on the VHF that a barge was going to be using Victoria lock at 8, so I called up hoping to go out with them. However we were told to use Ocean Lock, which is the biggest one, all on our own.

As there was no delay it meant we were out on the river too early and were doing up to 8mph without trying. Made it to Barmby in 1 1/2 hours and the tide was still running fast across the entrance to Barmby Barrage. The lock keeper said we should be OK if we took it slowly.

As we turned into the entrance we grounded on some underwater obstruction, but after a few minutes we started to move again and got into the lock safely. We were lowered about 5 feet to the River Derwent and went on to moor at the waiting pontoon. I went back to get our River Derwent certificate which is valid for a year. (The Derwent is managed by the Environment Agency).

Made good progress in the deep water and moored in a field near the Breighton Ferry pub. However this turned out to be closed, so we walked into the village of Breighton to find the other pub, but this had disappeared and been replaced with new houses. So back to the boat for lunch.

We carried on up the river and, after we made contact with the Melboune Arms to check that they were doing food this evening, we decided to turn off onto the Pocklington Canal and stop at Melbourne.

The first lock on the canal was in very poor condition with very leaky gates. After that the canal became very weedy, and towards the second lock I was having to throw weed off the prop every 100yds and still struggling to do 2mph. After the second lock the canal was much better, and all the swing bridges were in good condition.

Arrived at Melboune where a trip boat was setting out. They suggested that we moor on one of the, very short, finger pontoons, as they wanted to use the visitors mooring upon their return.

The pub only had John Smiths which was not quite as good as yesterdays, but the food was very good. Having seen the sweet menu and seen some being delivered to other customers, we both decided to have the Chocolate Torte with Cherry compote.

We finished the evening by going back to the boat for a bottle of decent beer and to plan for tomorrow.