Well those three days went
quickly. I can’t believe it’s that long
since I wrote a bog entry. And what a mixture of weather we’ve had – frost first thing on
Friday and a nice sunny morning then it clouded over and we had a thin
snow cover on Saturday. The snow soon
disappeared as it started drizzling and to be honest it was grey and gloomy for
the rest of the day.
Karen and I took it easy
on Friday and Saturday and took Buddy for a couple of long towpath walks. We knew we took it easy as we didn’t miss any
of the six nations matches – some good tense games this year so far.
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Whilst looking for good
places to park the car in Lowsonford we saw a life-size zebra-cow in a back garden
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BT are selling this old
kiosk to the local community for a £1. A
good way of retaining the inherent heritage. (The picture I took directly looking at the kiosk was too fuzzy hence the strange shot here)
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For sale notice in the
kiosk
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Buddy following his
favourite activity on one of our walks – stick killing
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On Sunday morning we met
up with Mike and Lesley at Stoke Bruerne. CRT are working on the flight of locks there
and opened one up to the public for the weekend. None of us had been inside a dry lock before,
although between us all we have been through most of the locks in the country a
few times.
Karen and I arrived at the
car park to find it was full so we had to drive to a school in the next village
where a park and ride operation had been laid on. We knew Buddy wouldn’t be allowed in the lock
for H&S reasons but were most surprised that the coach operator said he couldn’t
take him because he wasn’t insured.
After a pleasant bit of gentle persuasion from me and the CRT guy on
hand, he agreed to let Buddy on but the CRT guy had to agree to tell any other visitors
with dogs that they would not be allowed on the coach.
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Buddy rather pleased with
himself on the park and ride coach
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We all learnt a lot on our
visit to the lock and were really impressed with the CRT guy who explained
everything to us. At one point Mike,
cheekily, asked him what they call stanking planks and he replied, “Stop planks”
(Mike is not really happy that I call them stanking planks). But he did agree that in some parts of the
country they are called stanking planks.
He also said that the dam that stop planks make is referred to as a
stank.
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Mike looking pleased that
he may have caught me out!
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The stairs on the right
have been installed to allow the public to access the lock. They are also the reason dogs are no longer
allowed on these trips into locks.
Apparently one caught a claw in a metal grating once and ripped the claw
out.
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Karen paying attention to
our CRT guide
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The picture above shows
stanking planks in use. You can see them
placed beyond the lock gates and have formed a stank to hold the water back so the lock could be drained.
The picture above also
shows the cill, the large masonary step protected by the horizontal pieces of wood.
It is the cill that boats sometimes get caught on when a lock is emptied
and hence capsize if not rectified quickly enough.
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Looking out through the
bottom gates into the next pound
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Signal crayfish
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The signal crayfish is an
invasive species and if caught should be killed. They came from the US and carry a fungus
which is wiping out our native crayfish population; our crayfish are also
somewhat smaller and are generally greyish all over.
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One of the holes (at the bottom of the lockside) where water comes
into the lock to fill it up when the paddles above are raised
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You can see from the size of the hole that if
the paddles are raised too quickly then the force of the water can really bounce
boats around in the lock whilst it is filling.
The lock floor is made of
bricks placed upright. The floor of this
lock is still the original that was laid in 1797.
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The floor of the lock is
still made of the original bricks
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Some lock walls have been
repaired with a substance called gunite that gets sprayed on like liquid
concrete. Gunite is still used in a lot
of situations today but not where water ingress may occur. Because gunite isn’t porous, water can build
up in the walls behind the gunite and eventually the pressure cracks the gunite
and the walls collapse.
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A large section of gunite
has fallen away on the left wall exposing the underlying brickwork
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Part of the programme of
works includes re-covering the exposed brickwork. Apart from the danger of the wall collapsing inwards, the exposed coping stones along the top could catch on the gunwales of a rising boat and cause it to topple over when filling the lock.
After our visit we retired to the Navigation by
the top lock for a well earned pint and a snack – it really had been quite cold
standing around in the lock.
I’ve stopped sharing what
we cook and eat, mainly because I do most of the cooking now Karen is working
so it feels a bit too self-indulgent to discuss our meals. My middle son Steve
told me the other day that his partner, Amanda, is a bit upset that I don’t
talk about food – apparently for the first few years of the blog that’s what she looked forward to reading
about. Well, that and Buddy!
So just for Amanda, here’s
the salmon Florentine we had on Friday evening.
Forgive the frozen peas but we’re clearing the freezer out ready for
spring cleaning.
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Salmon Florentine (fillets
topped with spinach, garlic, shallots, chilli and feta)
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The empty lock
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