Glasson Basin

Here I am Rune

Distance  7.8 miles

Total 3634 Locks  229 Tunnels

Running total mileage 5397.1 miles

The plans for a trip up to either Kendal or the Lake District rather went out of the window yesterday when the water pump on the boat failed. Here on the Lancaster there is not a profusion of chandleries and the only two ‘local’ ones I could find did not stock the necessary replacement pump. The solution was to catch a train back to Preston Brook (Midland Chandlers) and get the replacement from there. It involved a 100mile round trip on the train (on a day of rail disruption) but the task was eventually done and we now have a new, functioning water pump.

Since we’d had our 2 days of mooring at Lancaster, we headed off down to Glasson Basin, which was a bit more of a struggle than I anticipated. The lock winding gear on the Glasson branch is probably the heaviest I’ve come across to operate and the locks were slow to fill. Add to that the fact that most of the pounds between the locks were quite shallow with a lot of visible weed and although it only took us about an hour and forty minuted to get from Lancaster to the Glassom Branch junction (just over 4 miles) it then took us another two hours and forty minutes to get down the branch to Glasson (just over 2 miles).