Swarkestone to Willington.

Travelled 5.2 miles, worked 1 lock in a time of 2 hours 55 minutes.

We left Swarkestone at 8.35 am with the sun shining and no breeze. It was hard to believe that we had ben caught up in a huge thunderstorm last night.

Stenson Lock was our one and only lock of the day.

Neither Keith or I have no recollection of coming this way in 2009, but we know we did. I am sure it must have been something to do with the fact that Keith was at this point becoming very very poorly, that we did not have chance to really enjoy the trip.

Willington Power Station cooling towers. During the 1950s, two coal-fired power stations were built on a site off Twyford Road, between Willington and Findern. They were known as Willington A and Willington B. The stations were privatised and sold to National Power in the early 1990s and eventually closed in the mid-1990s. Although most of the stations were demolished at the turn of the millennium, the five cooling towers have continued to dominate the skyline of the local area and I think are beautiful in their own right. A new power station is set to be built on the site according to a report in 2011, but as yet there does not seem to be any action.

We stopped off at Mercia Marina to go to Midland Chandlers. Now I am not a huge lover of marinas, but from what I saw of Mercia Marina it looks lovely and well spread out.

Cheerio to the marina, it was off to Willington itself, where we stopped off at the sanitary station to empty our cassette.

We then pulled over to the towpath and moored up on the 48 hour moorings.

The village is a busy little place with three pubs, a co-op, hairdressers, florist etc.

On the towpath is a handy sign telling you what is in the village and where, although we do think it maybe out of date.

You can just see Hadar in the distance, this was taken from the road bridge. Lovely little village with the railway running through it.

Since being back at the boat I have clean the brass and read a couple of friends blogs. Having read Al and Del’s blog, it really did bring it home how dangerous locks can be if your not on the ball. It is a lesson to us all, but thankfully they saved a mans life.