A day on the delightful River Wissey

Today – The whole of the Wissey and back, 20 miles
Yesterday – Moored Nr Fordham, River Wissey

It was slightly more weedy than last year, but just as delightful.  This river is perhaps my most favourite of all the tributaries of the Gt Ouse, although I have yet to see the Little Ouse.. believe it or not, we did not have enough time last year to go look at that!

The river meanders firstly between meadows with lines of poplar trees in the distance.  The land on both sides of the river is much lower, and so the banks are high in places blocking the view..

We stopped at Hilgay, there is a loo cassette tip out there as well as rubbish and water.. we did the first two as there were boats moored at the water tap.. it’s on a 48 hour mooring you see, not a dedicated “Do not moor on the waterpoint” as you see on the canal system, so it is a bit hit and miss to get in for water.. we would try later on the way back.  I nipped to the only shop in the village.. basically a butcher, but he sells bread and milk too.  He will also make pies if you phone a couple of days before.. meat and fruit pies too!..

Leaving Hilgay for now we continued, and once past the British Sugar factory it was out into the wides..

The Wissey becomes extremely wide in places, much wider than Tixall Wide on the Staffs and Worc Canal.. then passing some lakes full of birds of all sorts, and I spied plovers, oyster catchers and various geese as we passed.

We arrived at Stoke Ferry by late lunchtime.  Just the one mooring available at the end of the river.. how stupid is that!!.. but we took the very kind offer of the owner of the big caravan park to moor for an hour for free.. after that it was £3 a day.. huh, I couldn’t even get No Problem into the side, having to use the long plank to get myself off.  I needed to go to the Post Office today to post some urgent stuff..

There really does need to be some moorings at the end of the Wissey.. there used to be GOBA moorings by the bridge, but the caravan park stopped them.. On down to the turn next.. the end of the line for the Wissey is at a ‘Y’ junction with the Stringside Drain..

Returning back then..

It is very narrow at the end.. We were a bit bothered by this time.. the sun had gone behind some menacing clouds.. I had a threatening headache.. enough to grab some paracetamol.. we wondered if we would be getting a storm before we got back to Hilgay..  The British Sugar factory on the south bank of the Wissey is very prominent..

Here you can see how grey the sky has become too.  They own most of the land around this place, and there are many “No Mooring” signs.. pity.. it’s a lovely area and somewhere nice to stop would be very welcoming.. Mind you the smell coming from the factory was not very good.. so maybe moorings in this area would not be used anyway!!

We thought we would stop at Hilgay to get water and maybe moor the night tonight.. but as is everywhere at the moment, the kids had taken over the area, swimming in the river cooling off, and making a lot of noise doing that.. plus some of the lads showing off to the girls on the river bank were jumping off the top of Hilgay bridge.. two of them making a point of jumping right in front of No Problem.. but I knew they were going to do that.. so I headed for the left of the bridge on the approach, which gave me tons of room to pull over to the right as they landed in the water close to the bows.. well you get to learn about how to deal with bridge jumpers!!

So we continued on to the GOBA moorings to the south of Fordham were we had left this morning at just after 10am, and settle for this evening.. oh and no thunderstorm………………. YET!