LOCATION
We are situated on the River Trent at Sawley at the crossroads of the waterways system and the motorway system in England.
The canal network.
From Sawley you can go in every direction. Going east down the Trent gives you access down the Foss Dyke to Boston, the Wash and the East Coast. Further on at Keadby you can link into the system which will eventually take you up to Leeds and the Leeds Liverpool Canal. Going south down the Soar and Grand Union Canal will take you to London and the Thames. Going west up the Trent for a few minutes will take you on to the Trent and Mersey Canal with its links at Fradley Junction to the canals round Birmingham, Gloucester and the Severn. Further on up the Trent and Mersey will take you to the Llangollen Canal, the Bridgewater Canal and then on to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. Much of the system is suitable only for narrow-boats, i.e. those with a beam of 6'10" or less, but the broad beam boats still have vast stretches of river that they can enjoy.
The road network.
We are five minutes away by road from Junctions 24 and 24a of the M1 with quick and easy access on to the M1 for north and south travel, the A42 and M42 for travel to Birmingham and the M5 , the A50 for access west to Stoke, and the A453 for access east to Nottingham and the A52 Ring Road. I supppose that we could work out what percentage of the population live with an hour's drive of our moorings but life is too short!
Sawley Lock.
Even though technically on the Trent we are actually on a small section of canal which bye-passes the weir at Sawley known as Sawley Cut. We have lock gates above and below our moorings and so the level of water is controlled to a considerable degree. There is still some rise and fall depending on the water levels but nowhere near the variation that would occur if we were actually on the river. Sawley Lock, as can be imagined, is one of the busiest locks on the system. There are two locks in parallel to cope with the level of traffic and both are hydraulically operated from a push button console. There is normally a lock-keeper on duty but in his absence the locks can be operated by the boaters themselves.
On a slightly more sombre note, we are close to the East Midlands Airport and when someone collapsed on the moorings recently the air ambulance arrived within six minutes.
All this, together with pleasant views over the fields to Sawley Church, an abundance of wild life kept under tight control by our resident heron make this a much admired site on the waterways system.