Tuesday 7 September 2010

Grendon To Atherstone, 11 Locks.


What a day.............









Eleven o'clock and only eleven boats had gone past, by the time we had got the ropes off another four had gone past towards the locks.
As we pulled away two more came roaring up behind us with two more behind them, we realised with mounting frustration that we had unwittingly joined in to the rush hour sheep syndrome time of day.

At the bottom lock we were faced with this mess so we just moored up and waited for a couple of hours.








Eventually it cleared and we were on our way, if we had known what we were heading into though, we would have stayed well and truly put.

There had been a dry pound at the top of the flight in the morning and it took BW four hours to sort it out, this caused a massive jam of boats trying to get down through the masses of boats trying to get up.
We were at the back and it still took us well over four hours to make it through.






The weather was mostly kind though, I say mostly because it did rain in the early evening and it is now flooding down as I type this.






A motor and buttty heavily laden with coal ready for the coming season.
I suppose it is almost time to start piling wood and coal all over the roof again.
Where did that summer go then?




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





.

2 comments:

Glenn Foyster said...

We passed the motor and butty (Australia and Kangaroo) the next day and Kangaroo had sunk! Too well laden? The crew were in the process of pumping it out. Hope they were successful.
Glenn & Karen
NB Pedn Vounder

Ubique said...

Hi Glenn,

The butty was quite a lot lower in the water than the motor when we passed by, the crew were there and all seemed normal.
You are probably right about it being overloaded, thats a lot of coal to shift to get her up again.


Regards Chris.