Having waved a fond farewell to wonderful friends from France with whom we’ve had an awesome week, I was just debating what to have for lunch (and as is my wont when I’ve been talking French all the time, debating with myself en français) when the Skipper announced we were on the move – NOW.
Slightly bemused by the urgency, I reached for my windlass and headed for the nearby river lock. It appeared that the forecast was predicting that strange wet stuff would fall from the sky in positive much-needed torrents, so we could do with leaving a river that is renowned for flooding rapidly before we found we couldn’t leave.
Chugging along we realised there was a lock out ahead, but considered it was at the end of another canalised section so if we had to wait, there might not be such a bad place to be. We continued on, lunching on the move, until we arrived at the closed lock and found a cabal of Canal and River Trust staff debating solutions to solve to a non-equalising lock. Locks need to equalise, to balance if you will, for the boat in them to be released and to continue with its journey. A lock that won’t equalise just keeps filling or emptying (depending on the issue) and so it is impossible to open the gates to let the boat out.
They had already fitted panels of wood across where they considered the leakage was happening without a resolution, and it was taking 5 strong men to open the gates. Emptying the lock entirely to check the cill to see if a major leak was occurring there seemed to be the next step. That is a step that could take some considerable time.
As luck had it, they needed to empty the lock and we wanted to travel down so we arrived at an opportune moment. We were allowed to travel down with the emptying water, and continues on our way with barely a hesitation. All those lovely strong men on the lock meant I could put my feet up too instead of lockwheeling!
Now through where we had expected an obstacle, we kept going…and going…and made it off one river onto the next, and thought, well why stop now? Our evening meal was actually eaten on the canal network with 16 miles and 12 locks behind us.
By the next morning we realised what a good thing it was we had moved as the rain lashed the boat. Thunderstorms with spectacular lightning streaked across the sky the next day with yet more rain, and we were even more grateful to have left a river where a quick look at the Environment Agency data showed rising levels. Normally it will keep rising there for several days after initial downpours too, reinforcing our gratitude at having moved when we did.
It is strange to think that in the time it took us in our narrowboat to negotiate two rivers and get onto a canal, our French family travelled across countries and made it home using a tunnel and high speed trains! C’est la vie!
When a break came with a day dawning bright and clear, we set off once more, aiming to do a short 5 miles, 4 lock hop with the Skipper in the car lockwheeling ahead, with me on the tiller in the excellent company of Boatdog. The rain kindly held off until we completed our next move and moored up.
We navigated what is familiar territory for us on the Trent and Mersey canal, past the Clock Warehouse at Shardlow, up through Shardlow Lock which is definitely looking leaky and unloved these days, moving gently past long strings of moored boats to pass under Hickens Bridge, whoever Hicken was, which carries the noisy, busy A50 on its high speed way from Derby to Stoke.
Under the calmer more sedate and more rural Acrelane bridge, avoiding fishermen out with the early worms hoping to make a catch, and into Aston Lock set now amid huge arable fields that once would have been a patchwork of smaller fields and hedges worked originally by horses and then by tractors a fraction of the size of today’s monsters. Along this stretch it is obvious that the old weeping willows are suffering from the drought. One has split and a huge section is overhanging the water while sawdust and a sizeable stump marks the demise of another that looks like it blocked navigation for a while.
On through the brick arch of Cow Pasture bridge alongside the impressive 4-storey red brick Weston Grange, a home built on the site of an ancient medieval grange that once belonged to Chester Abbey. Two buzzards sit majestically on wooden fence posts at the edge of the garden, taking flight together as we chug past. I love not only the qolflife but the evocative names of the bridges and locks we pass.
Next it’s under the dripping metal railway bridge, splattering the back of my neck, before arriving in front of Weston Lock and the bridge immediately before it. Up again, only 10 feet this time arriving alongside the old lock house now sold off as a private home but once where the lock keeper/lengthsman responsible for a section of the canal would have lived.
On then to Fine George’s Bridge looking a bit less than fine with a metal monstrosity of a bridge dwarfing it built by Balfour Beatty as part of infrastructure for a massive power update. Overhead cables and wooden poles are being removed and cables buried underground.
After this the light and atmosphere changes as we glide into a steep sided wooded section alongside the Ukranian Youth Association summer camp, and then to a section where it warns to keep right because straying over gets you stuck on a shallow shelf. It may be that I keep more firmly right than the Skipper would do, and I watch the overhanging brambles brushing the herbs and flowers that have suddenly cheered up on the roof after the downpours. It is amazing just how resilient they are. They have endured being baked on a metal roof and seared from above simultaneously, and then they get a downpour or two and begin instantly perking up, miraculously flowering just when I thought they were done. I wonder how much rain trees will need to feel the same rejuvenation…
Due to water levels on the canals not being anywhere near where they need to be, mooring restrictions on sections where stays of 14 days are normal, have been lifted and we can stay where we are until the end of September when the situation will be reviewed. For us, aiming as we are to get into a Northamptonshire boatyard by mid October to get the boat out of the water for regular maintenance and a survey, we will move on as we can, as levels allow. It’s about another 40 miles and 14 locks until the next known low water lock stoppage (a lock flight that closed on 28 July), and then 53 miles and 27 locks from there to our destination.
We don’t have to worry about flooding now which might trap us where we don’t want to be. We have 2 months to do our trip, water levels permitting. We shall get as far as we can, but our essential rain dances will be continuing to try and help us on our so slow way!
Pickingupducks 