Monday, May 06, 2019

The staircase to Marsworth

On Tuesday morning, we moved on under summery skies. The canal was very pleasant, and punctuated now by several other boats heading down into the basin. The going was good, relaxed, easy.






Until the final pair, the two-step staircase. All went fine until we had Kantara in the bottom lock, with the lock above her full. I opened the paddles to empty the one into the other, and Kantara started to rise. And stopped rising. There was a gap between the bottom gates, and water was pouring out faster than it was coming in at the other end. I closed the paddles, emptied the bottom lock and opened the gates again. Grace poked and prodded with the barge-pole to see if there was some obstruction she could move - a brick, a supermarket trolley, an empty safe, an unexploded WW2 bomb, the kind of thing that's often found in canal locks - but found nothing. She reversed out of the lock and over to the towing-path where we tied up. I reported the problem to CRT, and we sat down to lunch

No sooner had we finished eating than two CRT staff arrived. They looked at the lock, identified the problem, and pushed an unidentified somethingorother out of the way of the bottom gates. The two of them then saw us up the pair of locks and waved us off as we drove out of the Aylesbury Arm and left back onto the Grand Union. Very prompt and efficient CRT guys!

We stopped again at the bottom of Marsworth Locks, and moored at the precise point where we'd spent the night exactly two weeks previously. Our world was very peaceful. Even the sheep in the field opposite were silent. Occasionally, a train whooshed past in the distance behind a hill, with a sound no worse than a gust of wind.

Perfect.




Spot the heron!


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