Exploring round Crick

Herbie's future new home (from next April) looks pretty good although very different from our current moorings on the Slough Arm.  We dropped in to Crick Marina on Sunday to introduce ourselves and get a feel for the place.  It's big.  They have about 270 boats compared to the 80 odd where we are now, and of course they are all on pontoons as opposed to the canal bank mooring we currently have.  

Apparently they'll probably put us in this row.  Which is just handy for the car park and the facilities.

Another big difference is the canal and its surroundings, sadly less clear water than at Slough, more muddy due to the greater boat traffic and I suppose the soil .  So no more fish watching, but very attractive, much more winding and rural and lots of good bits of bank to stop and have a picnic or a barby  

Here we see the surrounding countryside viewed from nearby Cracks Hill.  You can just make out the marina car park in the middle distance.    

Just over the hill, looking the other way we could see the new Yelvertoft marina (below)

Yelvertoft also looks to be an attractive setting, but the advantage of Crick marina  is that it has the pretty Crick village on its doorstep with a couple of shops and three pubs.  We thought we ought to sample one of them so we had a ploughman's lunch (or these days should that be a soil inversion operative's lunch?) and a pint at the Red Lion.   The pub and the grub was good and the people were very friendly. That'll do nicely I think. 

So it all looks OK, and on top of that we'll have lots of new places to cruise.