Day 4 – Saturday 1^st September. Well, firstly, where’s all the sun they promised? Last night we walked to the pub but found that they didn’t have Wi-Fi so back to the boat for an improvised chicken casserole. After that we slept like a log. Today we set off through Zouch lock and made our way along to Kegworth. This stretch of the river is very popular with rowing eights and we were overtaken by both a ladies team and a men’s team.

At Ratcliffe on Soar the river is dominated by the power station. You can just see the village church to the right of the trees and the cooling towers to the left.

After that we turned left at the junction of the River Soar with the Trent & Mersey

and stopped off at Sawley Marina to purchase a canal licence for one month. We only have a river licence where we are on the inland waterway system which works out much cheaper than a full canal and rivers licence. Brigid then went for a swim. It wasn’t planned but she slipped on a lock gate and ended up in the water and wasn’t too happy about it. Whilst she showered and changed and sat with her feet up I pushed on to Shardlow so that we could have a reasonable period of time to recover our composure with toasted sandwiches and buckets of tea. This evening we shall renew an old acquaintance with The New Inn

which is right next to The Malt Shovel

– guess what, another favourite of ours. We felt that after an unscheduled swim cooking was out of the question. Toodle-pip.

PS Covered nearly ten miles today!