The family at village moorings
The family at village moorings

Prickwillow via Isleham village to Judes Ferry aboard The Lady on a fine but cool day and some local politics

Another fine but cooler day with a good deal of cloud cover. Slight showers from time to time, not nearly enough to wet the ground. We wake late at 8.30am and take some arousing. The Prickwillow mooring is a pleasant one and has attracted two other overnight boats. A morning shop at the General Store for milk but no papers and off to set upstream towards Isleham, arriving at Isleham Lock at about noon. The lock-keeper is now breeding trout and has three full ponds interconnected by what he calls an ‘irrigation’.

They are rather splendid for sale to fishing clubs for stocking and also the local freezing centre. After locking through we discover that we ought to have moored below the lock for Isleham village at the goose green. This marsh is still well stocked with geese but it had evidently been overrun last year when one man had exercised 30 geese instead of his traditional one. He had now moved them upstream and the village have sorted out whose are whose as they were in quite a muddle! We are advised to cruise down the straight river and moor at the bend and take our dinghy into the village by the weir stream. This we do but stop short at a mooring with two narrow boats and a floating house on pontoons. Nobody being around, we moor and walk into the village for hamburgers, jumbo sausage and drinks at the only pub open on early closing day. The village has two historic attractions. Isleham Priory and The Lime Kilns. We were able to walk down and through the kilns built 150 years ago to smelt mortar from limestone. Back and after a brief altercation from a houseboat owner (who had returned home and was shocked to find our dinghy moored to her narrowboats) onward to moor up for the night at Jude’s Ferry, the head of navigation for The Lark. Our dinghy and outboard reach half way to Mildenhall, but we are forced to turn back at the staunch where the footpath crosses the river due to shallow, weedy and obstructed passage. A pleasant evening of drinks, fishing and short boat trips. *!!!* No news today – no papers, radio or TV. Only conversation with the town’s boys from West Row.

(*!!!* Some content with-held as activities once commonplace are now either illegal or viewed as reprehensible in this era of acute political correctness and so reference has been removed for a further 30 years or the lifetime of the subject (whichever is earlier) to avoid incrimination.)