One Small Bear and Two Big Rivers

Hanley Bear and I are staying indoors today, as the weather is very wet.  All this heavy rain is making life very difficult for boaters, especially those who live on their boats and families trying to enjoy a journey during the Easter holidays.  I am very glad that Grizzly, Polar, Uppie and I are not out on the River Soar or the River Trent today, but that's exactly where we were last August.

After two very interesting and exciting days in Leicester, we travelled with the current down the River Soar, stopping first at a place called Birstall so Polar and Grizzly could visit a steam railway.  I decided to stay on Uppie as I didn't know I liked railways in those days. 

Near our mooring was a huge country park with a lovely lake and a statue of a giant animal called a mammoth.  Polar and I got up very early in the morning to explore it and I had to stay very quiet while she took photographs of the birds on the lake, including some big, fierce swans and an egret.

We were very lucky that we travelled along the River Soar in mostly bright, sunny weather.  In late summer, there are often thunder storms and the Soar is a river that rises quite rapidly when there is heavy rain.  Polar kept looking at the clouds and checking the weather forecast, making sure we were safe to go through each lock.  

At Barrow-on-Soar we met some boating friends of Grizzly and Polar's, called Chrissie and Alan, and Cameo, their dog.  They were heading up the river, towards Leicester.  I thought it would be polite to give Chrissie a bunch of flowers, so I went out with Polar to pick some, being very careful to stay away from the edge of the towpath and the fast streams to the weirs.

The river kept getting bigger as we headed north.  Polar said she was glad we were going downstream as she and Grizzly had gone upstream with Alan and Chrissie on their boat several years before and she remembered some of the locks had been very turbulent, with fierce gate paddles, when filling up.

While Polar and Grizzly were dealing with the big locks, I looked at our map book to see where we were going next.  The River Soar doesn't go all the way to the sea, but empties into the River Trent, which rises not far from where I am writing, near Stoke.  There is a sort of watery crossroads at Cranfleet, where the Trent runs west to east and the Erewash Canal goes north.  You have to be very careful not to go the wrong way, as there is a very big, scary weir where the Trent and Soar meet, under a long railway viaduct.  Grizzly and Polar originally planned to go up the Erewash Canal but decided to go down the River Trent to the city of Nottingham instead, as Polar needed to go home to work again soon.  

A team of lock-keeping volunteers helped us through the big lock at Cranfleet and out onto the Trent, below the point where it meets the Soar.  I think the Trent is even wider than the Thames here.  The Beeston Canal takes boats into Nottingham, so we had to go up another lock onto that.  The water here is very clear and you can see lots of fish.  When we stopped for lunch, I fed them some small pieces of my favourite herby crackers, so I could see them better!

Polar and Grizzly found a good mooring space in Nottingham, near a big supermarket but not too close to the city centre pubs and clubs, before making sure I had plenty of bear food, packing up and setting off for their house.  

I was going to be left in charge of Uppie again!