Torksey to Dunham Dubs...

Now, the plan for today was to get from Torksey to Cromwell Lock, but, unfortunately luck was not on our side. It was just my mum and I travelling as Yvonne had gone back home yesterday evening. We set off at 9am, on another cold winters morning, by about 9:30am we had reached Dunham Dubs, which is a sort of S bend in the river.

We were chatting away, and both noticed what we thought was a duck bobbing in the water.. as we drew close we realised it was a bit of wood, so I steered to avoid it, and as I did so, we ran aground. As we were going against the flow of the river, we were pushing quite hard, and hence managed to get ourselves well and truly wedged on the inside corner of the bend.

After a few failed attempts to reverse off, we called British Waterways to ask their advice. A very friendly BW person drove down to check we were ok, and not likely to tip over as the tide went out. He said he thought it would be fine, and luckily, he was right.

So we just had to sit it out, for some strange reason, although we had nothing to do for the whole day, I didn't take a single phone on that day, so I have no photographs of actually being stuck!

Eventually at 5:30pm the tide had come back up enough for us to reverse off, and turn around so we could go back and moor at Dunham Toll Bridge.

One side effect of a 70' narrowboat getting stuck on the bottom of a tidal river is that as the tide went out, because we were only stuck at the front, the back of the boat sunk lower, and she twisted slightly! Various signs of this, were things like the only door in the middle of the boat not closing.. and some of the floor boards have popped up in the middle.