Yesterday turned out to be a long, long day. Sure enough that CRT chap came over at 2 pm. The news was good "Just removing the scaffolding and with a few tweaks to the gate, you should all be on your way."
2.30 pm and we were still waiting. Lots of banging came from within the lock, lots of bodies milling about but not much else seemed to be happening. 3.pm and CRT chap is back. "Another 30 minutes and the lock will be operational" he told us again. By 3.50 pm finally more scaffolding was removed, bottom gates were opened, and a boat entered the lock from below.
Yippee, the lock was fixed although only an emergency temporary repair, it should be good until a stoppage on the flight occurs. Ian found out that a collar had been fitted to the cracked heel post, big bolts hammered in, and then a plate welded to hold it securely in place.
Lock closures allow one to chat to those others caught up in the stoppage and what a lovely man was that chap on his towage and steerage boat. Name of Peter, he is well known across the system and two boaters in common to both parties were Tracy and Tim (doggie boat on Sola Gratia) and the infamous Maffi on his boat Milly M. Such an interesting life he leads constantly in demand for his services. Some time in November he’s towing a houseboat along the Soar to Redhill Marina. Rather him than me!!!
Anyway it was gone 4 pm before the first boat ascended, by the time Peter had taken his boat down, waited while another boat ascended and then taken the crippled boat down, it was 4.30 pm before we could enter the lock.
At the next double locks Peter took the left-hand locks, set the right side for us and waved us on our way once we were through. As a thank you, Ian set all the towpath side locks and opened the gate so he could go straight in.
But once we reached lock 60 he had to give up on that idea as a long length of moorings presented themselves and because of the lateness of the hour, we wondered if Peter would stop there. With every lock with us, we reached the moorings at the bottom lock by 6 pm. A total of 10 locks in an hour and a half. Now that was good going for us. Helps when every lock is with you though. It was nearly dark when we arrived and several boats were already there, still plenty of room and aware that Peter may join us, we pulled forward as far as we could. He never did arrive, but another boater did, so Ian was right not to continue to raise a paddle to set the locks for him.
A few photos of our journey down,
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| You can just make out the way the brickwork has come in on the left-hand wall. |
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| Not all the double locks are still in use |
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| Only just missed going straight down the chimney and dousing the stove. |
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| Lovely Autumnal colours. |
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