Tuesday 2 September 2014

Engine Lock (again)



Here I am Rune
Distance 4.1 miles
Total 578 Locks 19 Tunnels
Running total mileage 872.7 miles

Well, as planned we got to Engine Lock and if we’d been a little bit earlier we could possibly have carried on out through Stoke. We were however held up by a huge ‘raft’ of weed blocking the canal as we approached Engine Lock and having spent probably 40 minutes dealing with it decided that continuing was no longer an option. At this time of year we often come across small weed ‘islets’ that have broken away from the canal bank and are drifting in the waterway, but this one was an absolute monster. I would guess that our boat weighs about 18 tons but when we ran into this weed raft we came pretty much to a halt. Managed to push the raft for about 50 meters along the canal then reversed off it and squeezed through but it is clearly going to present problems when it gets to Engine Lock so I have e-mailed Canal and River Trust to advise them of the problem.
Tomorrow we should get to Westport Park in Stoke on Trent with the Harecastle Tunnel to look forward to on Thursday.

The junction between the Leek and Froghall Sections

Our 'monster' raft of weed

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