Crooke

Here I am Rune

Distance 8.5 miles

Total 1172 Locks 68 Tunnels

Running total mileage 1701.3 miles

Once again it has been a brilliant day weather-wise, clear blue sky, sunshine and little wind as we made our way back towards Wigan. We didn’t get as close to the bottom of the Wigan Flight as I would have liked and have now moored for the night at Crooke which leave us about 2 ½ miles from Wigan bottom lock so we will probably need to start a bit earlier tomorrow than is our usual practice. The hold up today was at Apley Deep lock which leaks very badly from both the top and bottom gates. To begin with we couldn’t open the bottom gates to get into the lock because of the water flooding in from the top gate. Used the boat to gently push the bottom gate open but then once inside I couldn’t secure the boat with ropes because it would have put me too close to the water flooding in like a waterfall so I had to stay on the boat whilst the crew operated the paddles. One of the top side paddles didn’t work so to begin with we could only work one paddle and as fast as the water was coming into the lock it was flooding out of the bottom gates so it took an absolute age before the lock had filled sufficiently to open the gate paddles. Even with the gate paddles open it still wouldn’t fill to the top so again it was necessary to gently use to the bow of the boat to push the top gates open. I think that lock needs to be put on the winter repairs list!

If we manage the entire Wigan flight tomorrow it will be a pretty hard day’s work, we’ll have to see how we get on.