The last lock

Well, we’re getting nearer to Devizes where the plan is to leave Brutus for the winter – suitably mothballed to protect him from the worst of the cold weather.

This morning we realised that we were passing through the last lock of this trip, which prompted me to calculate just how many we had been through since setting off originally last July – 1,436 of them. No wonder both of our backs have got a bit creaky ! More statistics in a future post.

Wooton Rivers Lock

To mark the occasion I took a couple of short videos – one going in to the lock with it full, and the second coming out once it was empty (the emptying itself is a bit boring taking around ten minutes)….

 

GOING IN :

 

COMING OUT :

Back to the wilds of Wiltshire

Having climbed to nearly the top of the Kennet & Avon Canal ‘stairway’ (see last post and diagram below), we stopped for the night at Crofton, opposite the pumping engine house.

Crofton is just to the right of the canal summit

The engine house museum looked closed, however having passed this way back in April and having had the opportunity to visit then, all was not lost. The Crofton Engine House has two working Boulton and Watt steam- driven beam engines inside, both originally installed in the early 1800s in order to pump water up the last remaining six locks to the very summit of the canal – there wasn’t anywhere at the summit itself to create a reservoir of spare water. Electric pumps now undertake the day-to-day pumping, however the old steam engines have been called in to do their original job when both electric pumps occasionally fail.

Here is Brutus opposite the Engine House

Around a mile across the fields and over the hill is the little village of Wilton (not the one near to Salisbury though), and just outside the village is a restored windmill which we visited earlier in the year, so we set off with the dogs with the weather brightening. The views across this eastern part of Wiltshire from the hilltop on the way are quite extensive.

Looking toward the west. The white ‘dot’ just to the top left of centre is in fact the canal

 

Looking in he opposite direction, you can just make out the windmill to the left of the picture

It is maintained by volunteers on behalf of the County Council, and is open inside to visitors most weekends I believe.  They also sell flour milled there, however it appeared this time that the sails had been removed – possibly for maintenance.  I can’t think that was a very easy job.

Wilton Windmill without sails

 

 

Stairway to heaven

Stairway to heaven ?  Well perhaps not quite, however the steps on the right of the sketch above do sort of look like a stairs. What it represents is a section (compressed) through the Kennet & Avon Canal.

The right hand end joins the River Thames at Reading, and each step represents one of the 105 locks over the total canal length of 87 miles.  Tonight we are around half way up the ‘stairway’.  The long flat bit near the top has Devizes to the left, and the big drop is the Caen Hill flight of locks.

The Kennet & Avon Canal is actually made up of three historic waterways, the Kennet Navigation to the east, the Avon Navigation to the west, and the Kennet & Avon Canal itself which joins the two.

The Kennet Navigation is a typical river waterway – ‘soft’ sides and lots of greenery :

In 1724 the River Kennet was made navigable from Reading to Newbury. For a long time there had been plans to link the River Kennet with the River Avon at Bath, but it was not until 1794 that a route via Devizes was agreed. The resulting canal was completed in 1810.

Despite linking the east and the west (Rivers Thames and Severn), through traffic on the canal only ever accounted for 6% of the total goods being carried – most boating traffic was short haul between different wharves, such as Aldermaston Wharf where we were last night..

The bit we tied up in is actually the remains of a railway interchange arm, where the canal was used to bring in materials to build the railway which soon took its trade away – rather ironic in a sense.

Our journey today took us through a number of quite heavy locks and swing bridges – Miry helped a couple of the bridges but decided to rest at the locks..

Here’s Miry waiting patiently for the boat to arrive

Late this afternoon we arrived in Newbury, and our evening’s entertainment was a trip to Tesco followed by a visit to the local launderette, however amply made up for by the sunset over the canal when we got back to the boat …

 

 

 

Back on the ‘K & A’

Well, we got to Oxford and turned off the canal north of the city, joining the River Thames via ‘Dukes Cut’. This route brings you down the river passing ‘Port Meadow’ – those familiar with Oxford may know it – an expanse of green common land to the west of the city.

Port Meadow

We didn’t do any sight-seeing on the way down the Thames this time, but stopped overnight at Osney (Oxford), Abingdon, and Whitchurch, before turning right on to the Kennet and Avon Canal (K & A) at Reading. The River Thames hereabouts is home to a good number of rowing clubs – and there were a number of keen rowers and scullers out over the weekend just gone….you do have to have your wits about you though,  particularly when they turn across the river in front of you !

Coxed ‘eight’ on the river on Saturday

A couple of other things we saw on the river earlier today :

A letterbox on a riverside wall which to all intents and purposes was completely inaccessible !

 

A colourful selection of riverside homes

 

The way in to Reading on the canal is interesting as it takes you right through the main ‘Oracle’ shopping centre. I’d guess boats would be familiar to most shoppers, however one or two did look a little surprised !

 

You can tell it’s Reading by the number of shopping trolleys in the canal….

Dipper

Today we’ve tied up between Banbury and Oxford, on the Oxford Canal, just to the west of Bicester

From here the plan is to join the River Thames at Oxford for around four days, and turn on to the Kennet & Avon Canal at Reading.  This has been the plan all along, however October can be a bit of an unpredictable month weather wise, and had there been a lot of rain it might have scuppered our chance of getting down the Thames (due to high stream flows), or made it difficult to punch along into the flow on the River Kennet.  As it’s turned out, the Kennet and Avon Canal summit has had restrictions due to low water levels this autumn because there’s been so little rain !

Back in June we posted a bit of a write-up about a group of girls during WW2 who trained to work narrowboats up and down the Grand Union Canal as part of the war effort. They were nicknamed the ‘Idle Women’ – their badges bore the initials IW which in reality stood for ‘Inland Waterways’.  To help with recruitment in 1944, a publicity photos and films were published to encourage a further intake of potential new recruits to apply.  Newspaper adverts carried photos of one of the original trainees, Audrey Harper,  using a pole on the roof of a narrowboat called ‘Dipper’.  It was also used on the front cover of the ‘War Illustrated’ magazine, April 1944 :

Narrowboat ‘Dipper’

One of the trainees, Susan Wolfitt, wrote about the exploits in 1947, and used one of the Dipper publicity shots on the dust jacket of the first edition …

Well yesterday we came across the very same ‘Dipper’, still in great condition, and having had a cabin added.

Narrowboat ‘Dipper’

 

Nice to see that the boat survives. Sadly Audrey Harper passed away in 2013, aged 92

Other news :

Our first frost this autumn :

Big-bridge, little-bridge – the little one was installed over the Oxford Canal in 1790 (with updates over the years), whilst the big one is the rather more recent M40 crossing just south of Banbury..

Finally, another unusual canal boat for the collection :

This one was only about 8 ft long and 4 ft wide. Many boats carry firewood on their roof for the wood burning stove. The wood on this one took up quite a bit of room inside !

Roller-coaster through the counties

Tonight we’re in Fenny Compton just north of Banbury on the Oxford Canal, and at last a decent 3G signal !  We’ve been looking back on our journey over the last six weeks – in essence since we left Skipton up in the Pennines.

A quick calculation shows that in those six weeks we’ve been through 260 locks, across eight counties.  We went up hill in Yorkshire, downhill in Lancashire, across the Cheshire Plain, up into Shropshire, downhill in Staffordshire, uphill in Worcestershire (and then down again). Further downhill in Warwickshire, and uphill onto Oxfordshire.

There are three things useful for working through flights of locks (where there’s a number of locks grouped together)…..

A windlass may be seen as essential by some, however we know of one guy who resorted to using a pair of mole-grips after losing his last windlass in the canal

 

A folding push-bike. This speeds up transit times between locks – the ‘lock-wheeler’ can go ahead to set the next lock, so that the boat can go straight in – saves wearing shoes out by avoiding walking !

 

Two-way radios (many thanks Gerry and Sandie !). Now, if you don’t have any, it would be easy to consider them unessential, we are converts however, and use them on all lock flights as an alternative to obscure, and frequently misunderstood hand signals !

One of the lock flights is the Hatton 21 on the Grand Union Canal, just north of Warwick.  They are quite heavy, both the drop into Leamington, and the climb back up to Napton.

Looking down part of the Hatton 21. The paddle gear is unique to this part of the Grand Union, and dates from 1934 when the canal was updated with wide locks to replace the original narrow ones

 

At the top of the Hatton 21 is this six foot long dragonfly sculpture

Over recent days we’ve come across a few more ‘interesting’ boats – here’s a selection for you……

This boat, despite being longer than our Brutus, had a little outboard engine on the back !

 

…this one looked every bit a ‘stealth’ canal boat. Not sure how you got off the front in a hurry though…

 

This one we’ve seen before, however worth highlighting again. It’s a conventional enough narrowboat, but is sat in a hole in a field completely isolated from the canal !

Finally, whilst not directly canal related, these two Citroens were parked in the camping field behind the canal-side Wharf Inn at Fenny Compton.

Deb has had a couple of 2CVs in her driving career over the years, and these two ‘camping’ 2CVs tickled her ! (Actually one’s a Dyane but let’s not split hairs !)

 

 

 

 

Downhill again

Well, having worked hard to get up to the Birmingham summit level, which interestingly stays the same right through to Wolverhampton, we decided to turn right, and take the ‘short cut’ to the Grand Union Canal via Kingswood Junction.

The original idea was to stop near Brindley Place in the city, but the security arrangements for the Tory party conference largely put paid to that ! Instead, having gone through Wasthill Tunnel (1.6 miles), the right turn meant a day or so on the North Stratford Canal, and a drop down seventeen locks, thus losing much of the height we’d gained by coming up the Tardebigge flight – oh well never mind !

We knew we were getting near to Birmingham once through the tunnel as the graffiti started, and the bridges began to have their unique little red doors in the parapets.

The red door is to enable the fire brigade to pump water from the canal, to fight fires

Lock No 1 on the Stratford Canal is a stop lock – originally just a 1ft drop to prevent the Worcester and Birmingham Canal losing its water downhill to Stratford. It’s unusual in being a guillotine lock, but is now permanently open.

Not even this escapes the graffiti artists

The lock is followed by Brandwood Tunnel, and looking over the tunnel entrance is (apparently) William Shakespeare – I suppose it is the Stratford Canal !

Stopping overnight near the village of Hockey Heath, this was how the canal looked this morning ….

Misty morning

….and being a bit cold, Poppy wanted to wear Deb’s coat :

 

 

 

Tardebigge

Tardebigge is near Bromsgrove (see the map above), and is on the Worcester and Birmingham Canal which runs from …. Worcester…  to ….. Birmingham, unsurprisingly.

Construction of the canal began in 1794 south from the Birmingham end, and reached as far as Tardebigge.  Today’s canal boaters know Tardebigge for two main reasons – the flight of thirty locks, which weren’t completed until 1814; and the location of a meeting which took place between two people, and subsequently spawned  probably the greatest efforts to prevent the canal network being entirely abandoned in the 1950s.

The locks first though. They seem to instil fear into many boaters, however their reputation is unfounded. Yes there are a lot of locks, and no you don’t get a break from them, as the pounds between each lock are relatively short (and occasionally empty !), but once you’re into a routine they’re quite fun !  We managed to get from bottom to top in 3 hours 45 minutes, including having to run water down in to at least one pound, to refill it, and finding all except two of the thirty set against us.  That works out at 7 mins 45 secs average for each lock and pound – I like statistics !

Here are some of the locks :

The boat got stuck on the bottom between locks in one place :

One of the pounds with low water levels

Our regular readers may recall we’ve mentioned before that all the water being run off down a flight of locks has to come from somewhere – primarily from reservoirs constructed for the purpose.

Tardebigge reservoir

Lock keeper’s cottage with a view across the reservoir (see picture above)

The reservoir was built not at the summit level, but half a dozen locks down, so there was a need to pump water up 50 ft or so to the summit pound.

The pumping engine house – now ‘luxury waterside apartments’ !

Most of the locks are around 7ft deep, however the top one is 11ft.

Tardebigge Top Lock

The top lock was built to replace an experimental vertical boat lift invented by a John Woodhouse and installed at his own expense. Finished in 1808, it was housed in a covered shed and used a fixed counterweight of bricks, connected by a set of eight parallel chains and pulleys. Lifting was apparently performed by two men using a windlass. The 64 ton wooden caisson was sealed at each end by guillotine gates, as was the lock chamber. It succeeded in lifting 110 boats in 12 hours but was considered too fragile for permanent use.

Consequently there was recourse to locks for the remainder of the canal and the lift was replaced in 1815.

 

In 1944, an engineer by the name of Tom Rolt published his book Narrow Boat, which reflected on his journey around the canals in 1939 with his wife aboard their boat Cressy.

Cover of Tom Rolt’s book. (I was lucky enough to get hold of a 1944 first edition last year)

The book was popular and Rolt received a number of letters following its publication. This included a letter from Robert Aickman, a literary agent and aspiring author, who made the suggestion that a society to campaign for the regeneration of canals should be formed.

Tom Rolt supported this idea and in August 1945 Robert Aikman and his wife Ray, travelled by train to meet the Rolts aboard Cressy at Tardebigge Top Lock. An inaugural meeting of The Inland Waterways Association (IWA) took place on 15 February 1946 London at Aickman’s flat in Gower Street. Robert Aickman was appointed chairman, and Tom Rolt honorary secretary, along with three further council members.

The IWA campaigned vigorously to save unused canals from being abandoned and had become a significant thorn in the side of the waterways governing body at the time, through the late 1940s and early 50s.  However, as with many organisations, disagreements over strategy developed, resulting in Tom Rolt and a number of other committee members leaving the Association. The principle difference was centred around whether the IWA campaigned to preserve a number of key canals for commercial carrying, or try to save the entire network existing at the time for leisure use. Robert Aikman supported the latter, arguing that he could see the canal predominantly leisure orientated. How right he was.

The IWA continue to support the canals today, however in succeeding to get the government of the day on their side in the 1960s, their role today is considerably more conciliatory !