Wide narrow canal

To our surprise, the conversion of at least the Warwickshire section of the former Warwick and Napton Canal, from narrow canal to wide canal, didn't begin until well into the 20th Century - the late 1920s in fact!

The famous Grand Union Canal Carrying Co. bought the ailing canal from receivership and built new wide locks and infrastructure to try and revive fortunes through allowing more and bigger waterway vessels with easier passage from the Midlands to London. It was all too late; the development of a faster railway network and the freight capacity of a single train, not to mention the reduced costs for that freight, was spelling the doom of most canals for commerce.

Today, as we tackle each of the twenty locks from our overnight mooring at Gibralter Bridge to Leamington Spa, right beside us lie some remnants of the old canal.
The defunct narrow locks no longer have gates but were converted into overflow channels for the new wide-locks, and in some places are now private moorings for boats.

Jo and Chris have adopted a completely different routine for working the Grand Union locks from that of the Oxford...
It goes something like this: Chris ties Pelangi at the lock mooring whilst Jo checks for boats approaching from below the lock and starts or completes its filling from the right hand, odd looking ground-paddle raiser. If the lock is less than half full, then Chris does the same on the left hand mechanism to speed the filling up, and when the top gates are ready to open, drops the paddle back and recrosses the lock to bring Pelangi in. Jo opens one of the gates - nearly 8 feet wide - and closes again after Chris is in, then also drops the paddle she'd opened.
Now, with Pelangi loosely tied, we start the descent: this time Jo crosses the bottom gates and raises the paddle - it's hard work as it takes over twenty turns of an often stiff mechanism to raise/lower each paddle. Chris does the same on the right-hand side and waits for the gates to part slightly - they usually do as water levels equal on each side - making sure Jo can safely return across the gates, rather than have to walk right around the lock.
Then Chris can throw the mooring rope down onto Pelangi's roof and either jump down or, if a deep lock, climb down the lock-ladder and take Pelangi through the gate that Jo has opened. PHEW! - now repeat twenty times.

It's half the work if two boats, and thus two crews, can work a lock together; and easier still if there're boats coming up each next lock, as they'll have inevitably left the lock full of water and maybe, if in sight of us, left a gate open as well. We aim to do the same for them, of course.

We have one short staircase lock to tackle just a mile after Long Itchington.
The procedure is similar, except that the bottom gates of the one lock, are the top gates of the next; so we have to be sure that the lower lock is empty, otherwise we'll flood the lock and its surrounds with the contents of the lock we're coming down in!

We meet several oncoming boats, so many of the locks are set for us to go straight in, and soon we are moving from open countryside into the urban landscape that is the edge of Leamington Spa. We find a suitable, though shallow, mooring just after passing under the railway bridge of the Cliltern Mainline.
Tomorrow we shall rest from navigation; a few chores to do and then we can enjoy another evening out. Lovely! Czytaj więcej