Tattenhall

Here I am Rune

Distance 7.1 miles

Total 701 Locks 26 Tunnels

Running total mileage 1069.9 miles

We’ve reached our target of Tattenhall Marina but it seemed to be one of those days when nothing seemed to go to script. The weather forecast had been for a dry morning with less than 8% chance of rain, well they got that wrong, it drizzled for most of the morning. The next irritation was that I just couldn’t seem to get the workings of these broad locks right. The only lock that seemed to go according to plan was the first one, Hoole Lane Lock, after that it all seemed to go downhill. The second lock had bollards too far away from the lockside for our ropes to reach so I tried to manually hold the boat as the lock was filled. The problem was that the side paddles empty into the lock about ¾ of the way along the lock which means that as soon as you open the paddles the bow of the boat is forcefully pushed across the lock and manually I was unable to stop it so it bumped quite hard on the lockside. I tried again on the next lock to hold it from on board the boat with the rope around a bollard, again this failed and the boat swung across the lock again. I then tried putting the boat on the opposite side of the lock when the paddles were opened, nearly worked but as the lock filled the flow got under the boat and then pushed it back to the other side of the lock, by the last lock I’d given up trying to control the boat and left it to its own devices. Shall have to design a strategy for these locks, they seem more difficult than previous broad locks we’ve encountered or perhaps it was just a bad hair day!!