Sunday 1 August 2010

Hazelhurst Junction And Back, 1 Tunnel.



A very lazy Sunday..............




 

Here's an interesting fact about the Caldon canal that Heth on Takey Tezey might like.
This canal is 484ft above sea level in the summit pound which is 14ft higher than the summit pound of the Leeds Liverpool.
The funny thing here is..... this canal is full of water!
The gates don't leak too much and there is a pumping system that works.


BW, left hand? right hand?




Some people like straight canals others like a few twists and turns, personally I like very narrow canals with Z bends to keep me on my tiller toes.

The Leek branch of the Caldon is my kind of canal.




There is even a tunnel just to add interest.
D was on the phone to our daughter as we entered this tunnel, the signal stayed with us until we exited at the other end.
Chugging through the bowels of a hill chatting on the phone is strange to say the least, but why then, when you exit the tunnel do you lose the signal? Odd...most odd.





Why? and I repeat why, do some canal boaters do this?  Packing together like a litter of cats, dogs, or sheep in the field.

This is the end of the line for this branch and it is packed with boats.
This whole stretch has much better solitary moorings all along its length but it seems to be an instinct to herd together that drives them on.
Another funny thing is that they will moan profusely if the boat ahead or behind starts their engine to charge the batteries.




This is an Eucalyptus tree in someones garden, with, of course, added Koala bear and baby.





In the world of canal boating there are the speeders, the slow, the very slow and Ubique speed.
We do not travel quickly and normally we are pulling over to let people through.

The man ahead of us is travelling at the speed of a tectonic plate, we have actually caught him up!!

Tickover was too much so we just came out of gear and drifted along behind him.







We are now back where we started from this morning, overlooking the main line of the canal as it drops through the locks towards Cheddleton. That will be us tomorrow.




Until next time.........................




.

2 comments:

Adam said...

The Caldon is a feeder for the Trent and Mersey, so if it ever ran short of water there would be huge problems!

We loved the Caldon, and the stretch to Froghall is fantastic. We couldn't get through the tunnel to Froghall itself, but we walked round to the basins which are well worth a look. Favourite place down there is Consal Forge -- very quiet (no tv, phone or internet reception), a pub, and a steam railway. What more could you want? (apart from tc, phone, and internet)

Anonymous said...

Hi Chris,
Wow I'm impressed, erm can we borrow it for a while?
I dunno maybe they tried to cut corners when the Leeds Liv was being built - excuse the extremely puny pun there, lol.

H