Wednesday, 22 November 2017

Smeeton Westerby to Newton Harcourt

Tuesday 21st November

It was cold today so I decided to wear my fleece lined trousers over my jeans. John was steering Prairie and I was doing the locks with Dex. We had 5 locks to do before getting to our destination.

Before we could start on the locks however we had to go through Saddington Tunnel. This is only 880 yards so luckily wouldn't take too long. It is supposed to be haunted by the headless ghost of Anna - eek!

 I went up the front of the boat with Dex so we could operate the additional floodlight to help light up the way.

 Dex isn't too keen on tunnels and he kept close to me. Maybe he also sensed the ghost was about!
 This tunnel also had some amazing ice patterns on the wall. 
 Soon we could see daylight again. No ghosts - phew!


 Up ahead was our first lock of the day, Kibworth Top lock. We could see a hire boat waiting at the lock tie up point. The strange thing was that John had seen this boat much earlier in the day going through the tunnel and so we were suprised they hadn't already gone through the lock.
 I got off Prairie and went to see what was happening. The hire boat was manned by a family from Malaysia and clearly they were having a problem operating the paddles. I started to try and help when a canal and river trust employee arrived and assisted them. We explained that as 2 boats can go in the lock at the same time we could travel with them and help. Sometimes hire boat companies don't give sufficient information to those hiring the boats and this was one of those times. They had no idea how to operate the lock and they turned their engine off when they got into the lock. The canal and river trust man explained how dangerous this could be as we were going down in the lock and it is essential to make sure the boat doesn't get stuck on the cill and sink! They would need to use the engine to keep the boat in the correct position.
 I showed the man who was operating the paddles what to do and we managed to get through the first lock without too much difficulty.

 On to the second lock. John was following the hire boat as we thought it would be easier for the hire boat to enter the empty lock.

 I told the man steering the hire boat to pass his rope to his friend so they could keep the boat on the side whilst John steered our boat in. But they only had one centre rope and it was stuck over the ariel so they couldn't pass it over. They had lost one rope and the back rope had completely snapped. This explained why we had seen them moored so badly the previous night. I felt really sorry for them, it was so difficult without the correct ropes. John just came in slowly and maneuvered them over to the side.

The man who was helping me with the paddles was really struggling with the gates. I was trying to show him how to use your weight and keep a constant pressure on but he couldn't understand me. Luckily the canal and river trust man arrived again and helped him. 




Up ahead at the next lock there were more canal and river trust employees looking at the lock gates. They helped fill the lock for us. They told us the next pound was really shallow so to make sure we kept to the middle.


We told our new Malaysian friends to make sure they kept to the middle so they didn't get stuck. Apparently they needed to get back to Market Harborough by tomorrow evening so were going to turn around after the next lock. There was a storm coming in later and John and I were really worried how they would possibly make it back all that way. We only had a couple of hours of daylight left and they would have to operate all the locks on the return journey by themselves.

I walked with Dex to the final lock, Crane's lock.


We got through Crane's lock and said goodbye to the Malaysian family.
They were turning round in the winding hole just past the lock. Really hope they got back ok!
We had a couple more miles to travel to reach our mooring point.




Finally we were going round the last bend before the mooring. There were great views here. We had decided as the storm was due and 40mph winds, we would stop here until Thursday. The nearest village was Newton Harcourt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_Harcourt

The storm woke me up in the night, the wind was really lashing against us. No damage though and although it was still windy it was quite mild out the next morning.

We decided to walk Dex across the footpaths to the old church at Wistow. http://www.wistow.com/st-wistans-church/




It was a lovely old church but unfortunately locked so we couldn't see inside.



No comments:

Post a Comment