Thursday, 6 June 2019

A short day to set ourselves up for the longer ones

(Boat Flamingo - posted by Alan)
Our overnight mooring with a view.
Yesterday we had made it across the Rochdale summit, after which all locks into Manchester are downhill.  We had considered trying to progress further down to Littleborough, but when I surveyed the state of the flight of 10 locks in total, I found some very low pounds, (a pound is the length of canal between two locks), and some short ones that were completely empty. 

 



Looking towards first lock on descent from the short summit.
We didn't have the experience of this canal to know how much water we would need to bring down into these pounds in order to get Flamingo's working boat depth through each of them, but the answer was at least "quite a lot".  Hence we didn't know how long it might take, so we decided to not try - once you start you really need to keep going, and we didn't want to run out of daylight, (or enthusiasm - which was by then a real risk!).

 

Impressive but derelict building besides Lock 42.
I had cycled down to meet other boaters who had spent more than a week at Littleborough waiting for Lock 49 to be fixed - unsurprisingly most wanted to get away in the morning (i.e. today) if possible, so I had let them know we were likely to stop where they were, and to try for a clean run through on Friday.






Absurdly short balance beam, with no alternate way to open gate.
We didn't need to make a particularly prompt departure from the summit to do such a short trip, so didn't actually start until around 10:00.  This may have been a good move, as there was some evidence that CRT might have partially replenished some of the lowest pounds from the night before.  However water levels were still very down from the outset.

  




Levels better here.
When water is short, travelling downhill through locks is much to be preferred to going uphill.  This is because you carry at least one lock of water down with you, but also if you do need to run additional water down you are not pinching it from where you need to go next.  In fact by going exceedingly cautiously,and picking a careful path through where we remembered the deepest water was going up, we were very pleased to run no additional water down at all.  The single lock that we emptied into each pound helped, and the two driest pounds were so very small that that one lock full produced enough depth for us to get to the next one - but only providing we went straight down the middle - no hope of getting near the sides, so I had to largely stay on the boat throughout.

Many locks on Northern Waterways sport these added reinforcements.
Towards the bottom of this sharp but steep descent things improved, with longer pounds kicking in. 

 













One of the few pounds worth winding the speed control up for.
At Littleborough all but four of the dozen or so boats that had been holed up here last night were now gone - hopefully all will now have passed the problematic lock 49 without issue.  We put Cath ashore at the final lock of our descent go go and shop, then David and I took Flamingo to fill with water and empty toilets on the far side of the canal.  While we were there the owner of a boat permanently moored there returned with his two dogs, one of which proceeded to immediately bite my leg!  I was sufficiently stunned by this to not have a right go at the owner as I should doubtless have done.  I am far too British, and am now sporting a sizeable blood blister.  The dog could have done this to anybody - I got the impression it was not unusual.  I was wrong not to make more of an issue out of it, and I'm annoyed now with myself that I didn't.
Final lock on a short day - we still did ten of them though
Cath arrived back along the tow-path just about at the point the water was full, so David and I "punted" the boat back over.  Even in sleepy Littleborough, it transpires, Cath can manage to find a bookshop not only selling books about Wales, but also actually written in Welsh.  The on-board book collection has grown again - no wonder Flamingo is constantly rubbing on the bottom of the canal!

Tomorrow we will again need to work a lot harder.

 Summit to Littleborough
Miles 1.4, Locks: 10
Total Miles 204.2, Total Locks: 225
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2 comments:

  1. Alf6 June 2019 at 23:03

    Sorry, but do report the dog to the Police, imagine if that was a young child that had been bitten ! Dog should have a muzzle on if it prone to biting if the owner cannot keep it under control.

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  2. Alan Fincher8 June 2019 at 19:45

    Hi Alf,
    Whilst we complertely agree with your thoughts, unfortunately our past experience is that the Police have no interest in such matters, and will simply tell you to raise it with the local dog warden. When Odin was attacked as a young pup on a trip on the Macc we tried to do this, but apart from difficulty finding the relevant warden we were then told we had to download, print and complete relevant forms. With no printer on board that wasn't possible and that area at least there was no way to do without it. Maybe here it would not be so hard, but our past experience tells me it would probably not be straightforward.

    That warden told us that unless it is a bad attack they would take no action on a single report. Instead they retain reports, so that only if there are multiple complaints about the same dog are they particularly likely to do anything.

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