After a very quiet night's sleep at the end mooring at Torksey, it was time to
travel down the Fossdyke Navigation towards Lincoln. The canal is said to be
one of the oldest in England and was built in 120 AD by the Romans.
It connects the River Witham at Lincoln, to the River Trent at Torksey.
{Music}
Phew, I think it's gonna be a rather warm day today! Already it's about 28
degrees celsius and it's 9.30 in the morning.
However when being on the back of the boat, although I've got loads and loads
of suntan cream on, it does feel a lot cooler purely because of the breeze.
Which is quite nice. Molly's sat here in the shade watching the world go by.
I'm heading down the navigation towards Lincoln today. Unfortunately I'm not
going to carry on further from the Lincoln Basin. I really wanted to go down
to Boston.
But to be totally honest, I haven't enjoyed this canal. A number of reasons.
The banks are all very built up. Lots and lots of nettles, lots of brambles and
weeds so you can't moor up. The designated mooring spots are always
very, very busy, regardless of what time of day you get there. I've gone past
about three yesterday or the day before purely trying to moor up and then
unfortunately, because this canal is very heavily dominated by cruisers, large
cruisers, because of their draft and because of the
fact that they've got two engines, that sort of thing, they go past very fast and
it doesn't half rock your narrowboat about all over the place. So I've decided, I'm not
going to carry on down to Boston even though there was going to be the lovely
Lincolnshire countryside and instead I'm going to turn around in the basin and
head back.
The Fossdyke is set within the very flat county of Lincolnshire. The 11-mile canal
is a series of long, wide and very straight reaches. Flanked by high banks
on either side. Once leaving the small village of Torksey the navigation
curves and remains straight until just before the village of Saxilby.
This is one of only two suburban areas on this route. On the final straight towards
Lincoln, there is Burton Waters. This combines a marina, boat sails and a
number of houses with their own private jetties and mainly caters for cruiser
style boats. Finally, after passing a very long stretch of privately moored boats
the canal opens out into Brayford Pool right in the centre of Lincoln. This is
where you join the River Witham if navigating down to Boston.
Village of Saxilby is quite nice. There's water there, there's showers there
and bins etc. There's a train station quite close by as well.
I think you need to get to the mooring spots relatively early,
sort of early afternoon
to avoid them being filled up because of the village is so popular. It's a nice
break between going down to the city of Lincoln.
The navigation is wide and deep and at the time I traveled had very little weed.
I was able to find a mooring spot at The Pyewipe Inn where I could stay for up to 48 hours.
I found this was a good place to leave my car as I continued east.
If you aren't a patron in either the bar or the restaurant, there is a simple £1
a night charge to leave your vehicle. The University of Lincoln
occupies a number of buildings to the south of the canal, as you get closer to
the city. The earliest origins of Lincoln can be
traced to the remains of an Iron Age settlement of round wooden dwellings,
right by the Brayford Pool. The pool or warf as it's also referred to is quite
large. There are lots of restaurants, bars and a
cinema along the bank of the wharf and within the pool, a number of brand-new
floating pontoons were being built. By the looks of it, their length is more
suited to cruises rather than narrowboats.
Lincoln is a cathedral city and is in quite a remote part of England with flat
countryside in all directions around it. Sitting on a small hill in the centre of
the city, are two significant buildings. The Norman Lincoln Castle was built in
the late 11th century by William the Conqueror and is only one of two castles
in Britain with two moats. This area is Exchequer Gate and it's in the city's cultural quarter.
You'll find a gold post box here. Royal Mail post boxes are traditionally
red but a number around Great Britain have been painted gold
to commemorate gold medal winners at the 2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics.
This box celebrates Paralympic dressage rider Sophie Wells who is from Lincoln.
Through Exchequer Gate is the second significant building and that is Lincoln Cathedral.
{Choir singing}
Building of the Cathedral commenced in 1072 and continued in several phases
throughout the medieval period. It's the seat of the Anglican Bishop and is the
third largest cathedral in Britain. [In floor area] Much of the design and construction of the
cathedral was experimental and suffered a number of setbacks. In 1185 the
cathedral was partly destroyed by an earthquake and in 1237 the cathedral
tower collapsed. It was replaced in 1311 with a new tower, topped with a spire.
{Large Bell Chiming}
The cathedral itself it's absolutely vast. There's lots and lots of different
corridors and lots of different rooms coming off it. It originally had a
central spire and it was the tallest building in the world for 238 years.
However in 1548, the spire fell down in a storm and had to be removed.
The cathedral features two major rose windows. On the north side is Dean's Eye
which survived from the original structure and on the south side is the
Bishops Eye, which is one of the largest examples of curvilinear tracery - where
patterns are continuous curves.
{Organ playing}
Sited at the top of a stone pillar in the Angel Choir is the Lincoln Imp. It
took quite a while for me to find it but legend has it, that he caused so much
havoc that one of the angels turned him to stone. If you come to Lincoln, the
cathedral and Castle are well worth visiting.
Before I left Lincoln, I wanted to take you through one final area of the city.
As you come around the corner there, just from the main basin. There's a bit of a
pull in the water and it tries to buff you into the wall here. I'm now on the
River Witham and the channel becomes extremely narrow. This is High Bridge and
it was built in 1160 AD. It's the oldest bridge in the United Kingdom
which still has buildings on it. The timber-framed shops on the western
side of the bridge date from around 1550. On the eastern side of the bridge there
was a chapel, dedicated to Thomas Becket in 1235. In flood this bridge is
virtually unnavigable for boaters. In the Middle Ages it was often referred to as
the Murder Hole as according to local tales, whenever a body was thrown into
the Witham it would often be washed ashore either under, or near the bridge.
The name was changed to Glory Hole to remove any connection to the grisly
nature of death and bloated corpses. The original term was used to refer to the
halo often represented over the heads of the Saints and Christ. Rather different
to what it saddled with today. The river passes under a new steel millennium
sculpture and threads its way through a lively area of pubs restaurants and
shops before widening out. The lock here is rather strange, it's a guillotine lock
which means that it goes up and down rather than swings open. Lots and lots of mooring
along here and it's all 14 days. It's quite quiet down here as well, {beeping} apart from
when lorries are reversing! I decided to end my journey here as the
high banks along the route to Boston meant it was a little featureless.
My friend Brady Haran, who has a number of successful YouTube channels wanted to
come and visit with his Australian friend and I wanted to show him a
traditional English canal, so headed up the River Trent to the Chesterfield
Canal. If you've not already subscribed please do. It doesn't cost you anything
and by clicking the bell icon you'll be notified about future releases. Until
next time, see you later.