Lea

Here I am Rune

Distance  7.4 miles

Total 3628 Locks  229 Tunnels

Running total mileage 5339.5miles

The trip today went entirely to plan, thankfully. I contacted the Preston Riversway office at about 9.30am to enquire what would be the best time to set off, and was told that high tide was at about 11.15am and we should be ready to go then. We turned the boats around to face the dock entrance because at about 1 hour before high tide they open all lock gates and allow the flooding tide into the dock which creates quite a flow, easier to do the turning around manoeuvre on quiet waters before they open the lock gates rather than after.

We got the ‘go’ from Riversway at 11.15am and headed back to Savick Brook, which was an easy entry on this state of the tide,coming from the Preston direction. We weren’t waiting too long for the boats from Tarleton either since they let them out of the lock at 10am, only 15 minutes after the time they let us out yesterday, despite the tide being nearly an hour later, suggests to me that we a bit late coming out yesterday.

Savick Brook itself was fine, a bit of a ditch, but I had no difficulty with water depth, which had been my main concern. CRT volunteers worked all the locks for us, although since there were six of us it still took about 3 hours to get through them all, and now, at last, we are mooring for the night on the Lancaster canal.

Entering Savick Brook off the River Ribble

This was travelling through the shallow bit before the sea lock

And this is the pipe bridge that restricts navigation before the tide has dropped enough to pass a boat under it.(the line at the top of the wall on the right hand side shows how far the water comes up.