15 miles, 0 locks
4 hours
Moored in the last gap in Ely!
Often, whenever we said we were going through Denver, peoples' response would be "Colorado!?" But no, this is the namesake- the brooding, industrial Denver Complex which controls a good deal of the drainage for this portion of East Anglia.
After the epic last night of the bumps party, we stayed over at Queen's college boathouse, on a couple of sofas- and having gone to bed at some time in the wee small hours, we made our way by train back to Ely and the Duck.
We went to Tesco for provisions- bread, sauces, milk, and diesel- along with all the provisions we wanted, and also visited the "Ely £ound Superstore", where we bought some pea net and some screw-in hooks- so as to make a cat-proof barrier to keep Lyra in the saloon, and avoid her coming on deck to lend a paw at inopportune moments!
We set off at 3pm, and set up the speakers for the Queen Adelaide straight, and to the sound of Queen's greatest hits opened up the engine to 2,100 rpm and set off down the four-mile straight at the dizzy speeds of 8.2kph, according to the GPS on my phone. Well, don't stop me now....
Soon we were on the twisting, boring part of the river, but fortified by tea and cake, we finally made it to Denver.
Moored up at Denver
We toyed with the idea of heading up the Relief Channel to Downham Market, and went as far as inspecting the lock- but then we saw the Jenyns' Arms opposite, and the lure of CHIPS was too strong to resist! Whilst sitting on the outside terrace, we saw another narrowboat, Moondaisy, try to breast up with some boats on the lock landing stage which were waiting for the morning tide. They were rebuffed, so we shouted across to them with the description of our boat, and they winded and headed back to moor alongside. They were amused by Lyra's reaction- apparently, she wasn't too keen on them coming alongside, and gave them a Very Hard Stare!
One last job was to remove the chimney, because the Middle Level has some extremely low bridges. It was eventually persuaded off with WD40 and a hammer!
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