Wheelock

 

Here I am Rune

Distance 3.1 miles 

Total 5285 Locks  432 Tunnels

Running total mileage 7,969.9miles

 

As it turned out today, the weather wasn’t as bad as forecast, we had a few damp spells but no heavy downpours until we’d moored up for the day. Since we started earlier than we normally would (10.15am) we moored up early for the day at 2pm. This then gave me the opportunity to get some bread made as we’re running out, and a couple of other small tasks done. The 12 locks we did today was pretty straightforward, helped by the fact that we were travelling ahead of a share boat with quite a few crew on board, so they occasionally came ahead to the lock we were in to speed things along. I don’t think we actually held them us as I was also filling the second of the double locks that were operational so it was ready for when they arrived. The only slight glitch we had was in one lock where, using my normal method of holding the boat against the bottom gate (going down) it started to be pulled backwards in the lock which I couldn’t figure out. Since I’d only got one bight around the bollard it became increasingly difficult to hold the boat at which point I called for the paddles to be closed down to find out what was happening. Even with the paddles down I still couldn’t hold the boat and eventually had to let go, when it then barreled backwards into the cill at the top gate. My first thought on seeing that was that we’d probably knocked the rudder oput of it’s cut on the skeg, but when I got down onto the boat fortunately no damage done. As it happens I’d repositioned the rear button when recently blacking the boat and that, not the rudder, took the full force of the impact. It turned out that the problem was that one of the paddles on the top gate was still open. Which shows that no matter how long you’ve been doing this lark, mistakes can still be made.

Tomorrow we should get onto the Shropshire Union, Middlewich Arm, and I’m hoping that they’ve sorted out a problem they have on Bridge 8, Nanney’s Bridge, at which the navigation is currently closed.