Water saving measure? - Hard to see it!

(Back with both boats being moved together - posted by Alan)

Setting off from Newbold.

Today we were simply continuing the steady progress back to our home mooring, and it was mostly a very straightforward day.

Waiting our turn for the middle lock at Hillmorton.

The Canal and River Trust have taken the decision to shut one lock in of each of the 3 pairs  of narrow locks at Hillmorton, supposedly as a water saving measure.  However, unless this is actually deterring people from using the locks altogether, it is very hard to come up with any rational argument that there will be water saving, and there are plenty of easily thought out scenarios where it can definitely cause additional water to be wasted, particularly where traffic in both directions is not balanced, as it wasn't today.

Finally through it!

What it is doing is introducing otherwise unnecessary queuing through the lock flight, and we actually had to wait a very long time with one boat at the middle lock.  Generally people were taking this with British stoicism, but I did witness one bit of "canal rage" where someone with more engine power than skill managed to reverse full tilt at someone else's boat, when there was not a lot of space foe a queue at the top lock.

So typical of the Northern Oxford

Our target for the day was Braunston, but it is always tricky arriving late in the day to find a space for a near 72 foot boat.  Cath went ahead to at least try to find a space for Sickle, but actually found one just long enough for Flamingo.  The canal was wide enough at that point that we could moor both of them breasted together,

Newbold to Braunston
Miles per boat: 11.2, Miles both boats: 22.4, Locks: 6
Total Miles both boats: 265.3,  Total Locks both boats: 107