I've had enough

Loughborough to Long Eaton, 10 miles, 9 locks

Apart from the trip to Aldi this morning going well (except that it started raining as I started to walk home) today has been on the poor side. Obviously the wet weather and grey conditions haven't helped, but neither have scarily big locks, inconsiderate parking in a lock approach and ending up on the Erewash canal.

I needed to get the train to London again tomorrow, so my choices were to stay in Loughborough and travel from there or get to Long Eaton which is the next station up. Wishing to make progress and having heard that the Erewash Canal was worth a detour, I set off for Long Eaton and in fact the journey has generally gone well—I even managed to buy more gas at Kegworth—and i was through Trent Lock well before 6, giving me plenty of time to find a mooring and settle down for the night with the heating on. Except that there isn't anywhere to moor. There's a lot of boats near Trent lock, but there's nowhere obvious to moor on the Towpath side and—with the exception of the Royal Oak, who have a mooring limit of 18 hours—there's nowhere on the off-side either. Sheetstores Basin, which I hoped might be the answer given that it's run by a boatyard, was completely full of boats and the approach is narrow and at an odd angle, meaning that you'd need to turn about 315° in order to get in. Then there would be the problem of there not being any space and having to reverse out, so I kept going—eventually finding a terrible spot right by a main road which had the disadvantage that I couldn't approach it without grounding. By this time it was starting to get dark and so I continued up the navigation, eventually going through Long Eaton lock.

Now it's at this point that I should mention something that Nicholson's doesn't, namely that Trent Lock has a discreet sign saying that a Water Conservation Key is required for the navigation. I didn't realise what this meant when I went through Trent Lock, because the ground paddles appeared to have been taken out of service and half the gate paddles were missing too, but I found out at Long Eaton: it means you need a 'handcuff' key to unlock the paddles. Now it so happens that earlier this year I bought one of these, mainly to find out what it is, so I do have one; but if I didn't, I'd have had to reverse halfway back to Trent lock before I could have turned. Now I was already feeling fed up with this canal, at how grotty it seems and how Long Eaton seems to be populated with chavs (at least going by the people hanging around near the lock), but this was really the final straw. If they need these for the whole canal, maybe it isn't the kind of canal I want to be on. I think I decided there and then that I've had enough: I'm tired of not knowing whether it's going to be possible to moor when you get somewhere; I'm tired of towpaths that you can't get near for bushes and reeds; I'm tired of never knowing whether where I've moored is safe; I'm tired of inconsiderate and ignorant boaters; I'm tired of not knowing whether there'll be enough power to start the engine in the morning; and I'm heartily sick of bad weather. I know that there's always lots of politics going on in my home mooring (not to mention people who are beset with 'issues') but at least I can plug into the mains and shut my front door and pretend none of it is happening. I've also realised that I'm missing my friends terribly. I know that I speak to some of them regularly on the phone or via e-mail/instant messaging, but it's not the same as going out with them or being in their company. In short, I just want to go home.

Going to work tomorrow is a lost cause, so I'll just have to make my apologies and hope they'll be understanding and I have to go through another two locks before there's a winding hole, which means four locks before I can get off this hell-hole of a canal, but after that it's full speed for London and 'home'.

While I'm having a moan, can I just mention the idiot narrowboat owner who had moored on the last two bollards of Kegworth Deep lock and who was polishing his boat's roof and rearranging the TV aerial, and the imbecile fibreglass cruiser owner parked on the same lock approach, only two bollards from the lock itself. Between them was a gap of approximately 70ft, which through lack of choice I was forced to squeeze into in order to operate the lock. As I approached, the man in the narrowboat went below, having studiously ignored my pointed looks and gestures; the man in the cruiser poked his head out the door, followed by an arm to push me off his fragile little boat, then disappeared below too. After I'd got between them and tied up, almost touching the cruiser, I went to ask the cruiser owner whether they'd broken down. Apparently not and the captain seemed surprised that I might think he'd parked inconsiderately—if I wanted him to move, I only had to ask. I don't know how he thought I was going to do that, other than by pulling right alongside and shuffling along the gunwale to have a word. I mentioned that this was a lock approach and not a mooring, so he had no business to be there, but that if he was going to be there, he should at least moor by the narrowboat so there was a large gap left by the lock. Of course he completely ignored me and I went off muttering and wondering whether I should take photographs and report him, but I just wanted to get on as I was apprehensive about the lock as it was. Funnily enough, after Oothoon had descended into the deep deep pit that is Kegworth Deep Lock, another narrowboat turned up to use the lock and had exactly the same problems I had. I'm guessing that the cruiser owner still thought himself in the right and that narrowboat owners are a miserable and grumpy lot. Of course tonight I haven't a leg to stand on because i'm parked in the approach to Dockholme Lock—but only because it's the first clear bit of towpath since Long Eaton lock. At least I'm on the furthest two bollards so other boats can still use the lock if they need to. Unless that cruiser turns up.

My final word for today concerns my roof. I've got an Alde central heating unit and for some time now I've been concerned about what look like cracks in the roof where the chimney emerges. I'm now convinced that they are cracks, because tonight I discovered water dripping into the boat via the central heating unit. It wasn't much, but I didn't feel like risking putting the heating on with there being water about. Deep joy.