Good morning. Oh I had really nice night sleep last night.
Lovely and quiet, but this morning, I have this to contend with!
It's a lift bridge and it only goes to one house so
there's not going to be that much traffic,
and I've been told it is electric. So it should be okay. It looks
like the control panel is on this side as well, which makes it a lot easier when
navigating on your own.
Come on then.
Well this is quite easy. No one around, it's quite quiet bridge. So I'll put
it in the up position.
This lift bridge is a bit tricky because the operating mechanism to open it, is on
the off side of the canal. So once I lift the bridge up, I can't get back on the
boat. This bridge is really made for two people. So what I'm going to have to
do is, put the boat really close to the one side, wedge it against the other side
and climb across the boat. So let's see if we can get on and do this. So that's
okay, it's not connecting to anything. So now I can do the mechanism
with a windlass this time.
Hmm, this is going to be interesting!
No I can't get back on because I haven't taken a rope and I'm not jumping that so
I've got to put the bridge back down, pull the boat over, get hold of a rope
this time. Oh the joys of solo navigation!
Okay so I'll have to climb on and then climb to the back, drive through and then
worry about how on earth I get back on board afterwards.
Thanks Canal & River Trust for making this really easy.
Nothing like going down the gunnel with one hand.
Okay so I'm going to go through.
If I can...
and work out how on earth I'm going to get on the other side there are some
people coming so, I may ask them for a bit of help. They could hold on to the
boat and then sort of give it a push, so it comes over to my side in a mo.
{I just reversed and climbed off the stern!}
There we go, I'm over and I can cross over and get back on board.
[Music]
I then tend to open a ground paddle halfway, just to let the initial gush
of water in and see how Alice copes. Sometimes the hole from the ground paddle
is huge and sometimes it isn't but this one seems to be fine so I can
open it a bit more. Alice is quite happily rising in the lock,
I've only opened one ground paddle so it's not too disruptive and I'm going to
go ahead and open the ground paddles, or the gate paddles of the next lock
because there's a really short pound here and it would be ideal for me to
drive out of one, and into the next. Just speeds things up a bit.
Another little tip I've learnt, that speeds up getting through a lock is,
instead of just driving out of the lock and mooring up and then coming back
and closing the gates. I nudge myself out ever so slightly, reverse a little bit
like I'm doing now, which pauses the boat. I can get off
without it going anywhere and close the gate.
Check all my paddles are down and then I can just drive off.
As soon as you go past bridge 26 it opens out into some lovely countryside.
No more locks today. I'm going to keep going and I'm going to go up the Leek
arm. Patrick, one of the guys that helped me get through about three locks back,
he joked and said 'don't mention leeks when on a boat'. So, a different type of leek.
It's actually spelt like a Welsh leek, l-e-e-k rather than a water leak like
l-e-a-k. Hopefully I've got my spelling the right way around. Hasn't rained at all
yet today and it's just lovely and peaceful.
The further you go up the Caldon Canal the prettier it seems to get. We're
quite high up here and it's lovely countryside. It reminds me a bit like the
Ashby Canal, at the end bit.
I'm at a split on the Caldon Canal now. The Leek branch
goes off to the left and the Caldon Canal carries on a bit further
down on the right-hand side. However, when you get to the junction, it's a bit
deceiving because if you want to go on the Leek Branch, you go to the right and
if you want to go on the Caldon Canal, you go on the left because they cross
over each other. So don't just go with your instinct of going left for Leek and
right for the Caldon because it's not that way around!
I can see a head-on crash coming on.
Because theres a boat coming across the aqueduct and I'm here so don't really
know how we're going to do this.
It's quite a small tunnel, 120 metres, 383 feet. It's quite slim though but at least
you can see the end.
{All craft over 45 feet wind here}
So as I wind around - that's a bit of a mouthful to say, this is the end of the
Leek arm of the Caldon Canal. I can't go any further because I'm obviously over
45 feet long.
[Gurgles]
Making some weird noises, but hopefully I should turn around
and go back the way I came.