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| Nice fresh red admiral on a rock outside the boat on Monday |
Regular readers will know
that Karen was still away in Edinburgh on Monday and, as our weekend visitors
had gone, I had the day to myself. Other
than the daily trip to see my parents I spent the day taking short walks with
Buddy and generally pottering around the boat.
We have been moored on one
side of a winding hole in the middle of Gargrave for the last five days. In front of us, on the other side of the
winding hole, is room for a couple of boats to moor before a water point and a
lock landing. A pair of boats were
moored in the mooring space when we arrived and I had got to know both couples
over the last few days. They both have
permanent moorings up at Barnoldswick (pronounced Barlick by the locals) and
moved off on Monday afternoon so they could be sure of getting back before the
canal between Wigan and Gargrave closed at the end of the week.
The spot they were in lost
the evening sunshine later than where we were moored so I moved the boat down
once they had gone. I have to admit that
I just hauled the boat down and didn’t even bother putting the tiller arm on –
rather lazy and a bit silly. It’s not
good practice to move a boat without having the means to start the engine and
steer it if an emergency occurred. I
took the risk as there was no wind and there were no boats coming up the lock
in front of us. All was OK (this time 😉).
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| Our new mooring in Gargrave |
During the day I received
emails about further impending canal closures in the area following the
extended dry period. Not only is this 59-mile
section of the Leeds & Liverpool being closed for at least the whole of
August, the Rochdale, Huddersfield Narrow, Macclesfield, and Peak Forest canals
are also closing. It’s just as well we
are going away for a couple of months or so towards the end of August otherwise
we would be getting short of options.
Talking about closures,
the 12 mile section at the Liverpool end of this canal is still closed because
of the breach at Melling six weeks ago.
Eight of the boats who ended up being stranded in the docks are still
there; the rest have escaped in convoys (or flotillas?) by heading out on the
Mersey and onto the Manchester Ship canal down to rejoin the main canal system
at Ellesmere Port near Chester. I say
the rest but Chris & Aileen had their boat craned out early on as they only
had a few months cruising time left and wanted to make the most of it before
going back to NZ for our winter.
The eight boats have
actually been joined by three more. One
has recently been built and dropped into the docks and the other two were the
two boats trapped in the Liverpool side of the breach at Litherland. That section has now been refilled with water
enabling these two boats to get into the docks.
Before leaving to pick
Karen up from Lancaster station in the evening there was a knock on the
boat. It was Richard, one of the lock
keepers on the Gargrave and Bank Newton flights. He asked if I would make sure the lock we
were moored near (Higherland lock) was left about ¾ full overnight. The last boat would be up by 5.00pm as the
bottom lock would be closed by 4.00pm. The
theory was that leaving the lock nearly full was better than completely full as
there would be added pressure on the top gates thus reducing leakage.
The theory seemed to hold
as Tuesday morning was the first since we have been here that the pound hasn’t
dropped by 9-18 inches overnight and most of the overnight moorers have woken
up listing at quite an angle. It hasn’t
affected us as we have left long lines so the boat drifts out into the cut and
doesn’t get caught on the underwater ledge/shelf that juts out from the bank in this area.
We were just shutting up
the boat to go off and see my parents when I heard Karen exclaim, ‘Oh hello
it’s you!’. Peering through the hatch
was Nancy Campbell, the canal poet laureate we met last week. She is kayaking the 127-mile length of the
Leeds & Liverpool canal over seven days as part of the 160-mile Desmond
Family Canoe Trail, travelling coast to coast from Liverpool to Goole. Click here for more information.
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| Nancy saying hello |
She was being accompanied,
on this part of her trip, by Jasper Winn, the CRT’s Writer in Residence, and
Greg Brookes the Desmond Family Canoe Trail’s programme manager.
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| Jasper on the left and Greg on the right |
Boaters may have heard of
Jasper Winn through his book - Water Ways: A Thousand Miles Along Britain’s
Canals.
This next picture shows
how the rain we had the other morning has brought some life back to the grass
but, sadly, it hasn’t made any impact on the becks and rivers around here.
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| Off they go! |
We are planning on walking
up Whernside, Yorkshire’s highest peak on Wednesday meaning we will have walked
the three Yorkshire peaks in a couple of weeks rather than the 24 hours by
three-peak challengers. At least we have
time to take in the sights, sounds and scenery 😊
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