Random Writings

I left Cambridge on Monday afternoon at around half-past two. In the morning I’d run a few last-minute errands and then sat down to skim over a thesis from another researcher in the group to help give me ideas as to how to organise my own.

The first leg was over very familiar territory – from my customary mooring on Midsummer Common to the public mooring at Clayhithe, on the outskirts of Waterbeach village. I’ve done this route many times before when I used to moor at Waterbeach and had to bring Innocenti into Cambridge periodically to pump out. Having arrived at Clayhithe, I fairly soon headed back to Cambridge by train – in order to meet friends at the Cambridge Beer Festival! This slightly cock-eyed arrangement – after all, the beer festival is held a stone’s throw from where I had been moored – was so that I didn’t have to spend a full day cruising singlehandedly later in the week.

Day 1: Cambridge to Waterbeach – 5 miles and 1 lock.

Tuesday morning saw me awake with no discernible beer festival after-effects and then sit down to draft a thesis outline to send to my supervisor. The idea is to organise quite a lot of disparate material into a coherent narrative, so I’ve laid out chapter and subsection headings showing how I’ll try and achieve this. Just as I was coming to the end, I found myself invited for coffee with Jackie of WB Pippin on my former mooring site by Bottisham Lock. She was headed out later, so I motored down there for a coffee and caught up with her and another former neighbour, Gabriel. Back to the boat for some more work – a few emails and a re-read of some other literature.

I also rang the lock-keeper at Denver Sluice to find out the time of the passages across the tidal section of the Great Ouse and into the Middle Level at Salter’s Lode. I was offered a choice of 6pm today, 7:30am tomorrow or 8am Thursday. Having looked at the distances involved, I reckoned 8am Thursday was the best bet. That would allow me to go to Ely or Littleport today, on to Denver on Wednesday, and then go through with the tide first thing on Thursday before heading on to March in the afternoon.

So, after lunch, I went to Ely. This always takes longer than I think – and I wasn’t moored up in the city centre until after 4pm. I paused here and undertook a provision expedition to Tesco’s! Suitably re-stocked, I decided on an early dinner and then motored on with the intention of stopping about half-way to Littleport. The mooring there looked busy – although as I passed I realised that the gap between boats wasn’t as small as it looked and I’d have got in easily – and I pressed on to Littleport. The first two public moorings were full, but fortunately there was a space on the final one and I eased into it just after 8pm. Tomorrow there should be more work and less cruising, as it’s only 3 hours down to Denver and I won’t have anyone to distract me!

Day 2: Waterbeach to Littleport, 17 miles and 1 lock.
Total so far: 22 miles and 2 locks. Thesis 160 words, 3 pages.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 25th, 2010 at 9:08 pm and is filed under Narrowboat, PhD.