Towards Huddersfield

Karen realised this morning that we had been living on the boat for six months last Sunday.  I asked Karen if she thought it felt that long and she said, ' It just feels like life now'.

When we moored at Marsden on Wednesday evening we had no internet or TV  signal.  Our intention on Thursday was to cruise until we could moor somewhere with a TV signal so we could see the first constituency results as they come in.  This meant we would have to descend an 11 lock flight towards Huddersfield before finding a pound long enough to moor in.

Having put everything back on the roof after emerging from the tunnel yesterday we had to remove it again in the first lock as a pipe across the exit was too low.

A couple of shots as we left Marsden:

The canal runs alongside the River Colne.

 

There had been so much rain over the last few days that some of the locks were flooded but not enough to halt our progress.

One lock was featured on Blue Peter recently as they filmed new gates being made and then lifted into place.  There was a family there as the children wanted to have pictures next to it in the hope of getting a Blue Peter badge.  They were absolutely rapt when we let them help us through the lock.  They were lucky to see a boat as only three go through on three days of the week.

We moored for lunch as soon as we had descended the locks.  We were outside Cellar Clough Mill which has been empty for decades and each plan for conversion to offices and/or apartments has come up against different barriers.  They now fear that the structure is so unsafe that at least 2/3rds of it will have to be demolished first.  The main chimney stack has already been demolished for fear of it collapsing.

During lunch we checked we had a decent TV signal.  Ironically we were moored about ¼ mile away from a transmitter on a hill so we had good reception.  Stupidly I still used my app to find what direction to point the aerial even though I could physically see it.  We then realised we had a dilemma as we had to get back to the tunnel by 8.30 in the morning which meant getting up really early and going back up the 11 locks first.  We rang the tunnel passage booking office and found out that if we miss our slot tomorrow then we would have to wait a week until the next available slot. We realised that we would have to go tomorrow.  They did agree that we could go last so we don’t need to get there until 9.30.  It’s going to be fun as we intend staying up tonight as long as we can and then leaving at 6 in the morning to go back up the locks before going through the tunnel again.

We decided the best thing to do was to turn round first so at least we were heading in the right direction.

Here’s Buddy looking pleased with himself after finding a tennis ball while I’m turning the boat round.

We then decided to go up one lock as we thought we could moor above that but we tried for ages and just could not get close enough to the bank. We love this canal even though it is so shallow.

We then went through the next lock and after 30 minutes of manoeuvring we finally got close enough and we could still see the TV transmitter!  At least that meant we had two fewer locks to do in the morning.  

Here are the 11 locks we went down today.