Horbury Still............Aghhhhhh.

They do say things come in threes.

Bit of a disaster yesterday morning.

Story Time:

As we slipped our night moorings to enter the next lock another boat appeared going our way. (This seems to happen more times than is natural, we had not seen another boat on the move at all the day before. Other boaters will fully understand this).

Anyway, this bloke was on his own and wanted to share the lock, no problem there but in the lock I made an horrendous mistake. Whilst I was concentrating on not letting our boat bang into his in the lock flows I let Ubique slip back under the bottom gate walkway whereby the tiller jammed underneath. A few seconds of that resulted in a seriously bent piece of 38mm solid steel bar and an unusable boat.

Oh dear me, never mind, what a shame etc........ were some of the things you wouldn't have heard me saying.

A long story cut short, Trevor from the NB Libbyanna took me by car to the Wharf boatyard at Wakefield, where they put the tiller in a forge (that they had to light especially) and bent it straight again ready for collection in the morning.

The cost?.....nothing, absolutely nothing. They were only too glad to help a boater in trouble and not a penny would they accept.

We are in Yorkshire......................Thanks Guys.

Onward!

This is one of the ground sluices to be found on the Calder & Hebble, windlass and ratchet, different shape but straight forward.



This on the other hand is a completely different kettle of fish, D has the lump of wood (Lock Spike) in the hole and is fitting the ratchet. Once the ratchet is in place a good pull downwards lifts the sluice gate a few inches then you remove the wood and start again in the next hole and so on. Technology at its best.

This is certainly a bit of a change from the push button locks of last week





Some of these locks are not exactly in the best of condition either, you didn't want to push too hard on this one.

We are now at Dewsbury having stopped because of the heat. Its Scorchio.

Until tomorrow..................