From mwickett@decisionsolutions.com Mon May 3 21:42:02 1999 Date: Tue, 5 May 1998 11:27:49 +0100 From: Mark Wickett Reply-To: canals@blacksheep.org To: Canals Mailing List Subject: TRIP REPORT: Out and About on the Cut: Day 8 [The following text is in the "iso-8859-1" character set] [Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set] [Some characters may be displayed incorrectly] OUT AND ABOUT ON THE CUT - day 8 Recap: After seven days on the canal, we're nearly home: saddened for the holiday to be nearly over, but thoroughly relaxed all the same. Sunday: We awoke late to brilliant sunshine. Easter Day brought lots of families down to Salts Mill and it was not long before our boat is getting admiring glances. At least, that's what I thought they were, but it wasn't until I clambered off the boat to the towpath that I noticed the sign for the Apollo Cruisers' Trip Boat that indicated the first boat was due at our mooring spot in less than half an hour. We quickly untied and dragged the boat a few yards so that she was clear of the "bus stop" (complete with an actual bus stop sign!). It was perhaps unfortunate that the cruiser "Playing Away" (?) painted out in Chelsea's away colours (I assume) chose to ignore the signs and tied up shortly afterwards much to the frustration of the steerer of the wide boat "Water Prince"... We were to be joined today by four friends: Lorraine and David arrived promptly - Lorraine donating a huge sack of firewood for our stove - but Karen and Andrew were nowhere to be seen. We waited 45 minutes for them, but we didn't want to get back too late that night, so we were forced to set off. We spotted them walking along the towpath a few minutes later: they had been waiting at the Shipley Warehouses thinking that that was "Salts Mill"... The last few locks and swingbridges provided the entertainment as our final crew worked out the operation of them - with a hasty reminder that the private boat that had just ascended Field Three Rise was not closing the paddles correctly by removing the ratchet and letting the paddles drop - but the gongoozler-friendly locks at Dobson were to be our undoing. A boat had just ascended the two-rise and we went straight in to the top chamber. I checked the lower chamber and it wasn't entirely empty but didn't appear to be too full, so I assumed the overflow could handle any minor discrepancy in the levels of the water and the top of the lock chamber... after a couple of minutes of unlocking the four paddles and instructing our crew that they could open them up, I glanced down to see a couple of boats waiting at the bottom of the lock and a couple of their crew coming up to help. But why was one of them just standing there a few feet from the lock looking concerned? Probably because the water level was now a few inches *above* the tops of the lock chamber and the spectacular waterfall over the gates was only one of the ways down to the lower levels - the adjacent road was quickly turning into a river... My shouts were correctly interpreted by our novice crew and all the paddles were promptly and properly closed whilst I opened up a paddle in the lower chamber to stop the now much admired waterfall! I still don't really know why the other boat crew just stood and watched, but I suppose they didn't want to get their feet wet. My red face was enough to tell our crew that this wasn't the proper way of navigating such a lock, but my attempts to salvage the day with the electrically controlled swing bridge was not a success. The bridge opened fine, much to the disappointment of several car drivers: one of which just wound down his window and let the whole world know that his taste in "music" was limited to that which destroys bass speakers and another driver the other side of the bridge who completely ignored the queue of cars and drove past the incredulous drivers right up to the barrier. I didn't know which gate to open first to achieve the effect of annoying the offensive driver since they both qualified, but the queues quickly died down before I could retrieve my key from the operating unit. It was a good fifteen minutes later before the key could be removed - after repeatedly opening and closing the barriers to convince the unit that the operation was complete... finally, we were home and just time for a quick cuppa before I took our crew back to their cars at Salt's Mill and Catherine and I returned home to unload the boat. And so ends our travels on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal for another week - I hope you've enjoyed reading this as much as I have enjoyed trying to decipher the rain-splashed log book (or is that wine?). In addition, I hope that some of the information is useful to those on the mailing list/newsgroup who are doing part or all of this canal in the near future - please e-mail me if I can help with any other advice, and I'm looking forward to seeing you when you pass by the house or boat! Mark Wickett n.b. Ruddy Duck