Random Writings

Wednesday was spent going to Ashton-under-Lyne from Manchester. It took all day, it always does. At least it didn’t rain much.

Day 49: Castlefield to Portland Basin, 7 miles and 27 locks (phew!).

Thursday was more interesting, going up the Huddersfield Narrow Canal. Apart from a false start (the boat ingested a large anorack into the propeller, necessitating a ten-minute weedhatch session), the locks were mostly easy to operate and the canal remarkably free of boats. The first few locks in Ashton are a bit grim, and the bit through Stalybridge is trying quite hard to de-regenerate itself (with weeds growing through the new block paving), but once beyond Stalybridge the canal becomes rural and tranquil, climbing the Tame Valley amid huge banks of sweet-smelling Himalayan Balsam. A word to the wise – you can’t moor just anywhere on the Huddersfield, it’s shallow and has a stupid underwater ledge, like the Shroppie. In particular, you can’t moor anywhere near the railway station at Greenfield. You can moor between lock 21W and Clogger Knoll Bridge (48 hour moorings), and on the towpath just beyond Clogger Knoll Bridge. The final moorings (room for about 4 boats) are just below Lock 24W, which is the highest you can go without a tunnel booking.

Day 49: Portland Basin to Uppermill, 6 miles and 21 locks.

Today I’ve moved the short distance from Uppermill to lock 24W in Dobcross, ready for the tunnel passage tomorrow. Note that the top paddlegear on lock 23W is improbably stiff and the paddles don’t open more than half way. You need a long throw windlass or superhuman strength or both.

Day 50: Uppermill to Wool Road, 1 mile and 2 locks.

We got up early, having been warned by the lock-keeper at Dutton that his colleagues would probably arrive early to operate the lock for us. True to form, they arrived just after 8am. Weston Marsh Lock has seen better days, and the chain drive to the top gates has broken, so the poor BW guys drag it open with a Tirfor portable winch and a steel cable. We locked down, and I called the Ship Canal’s control office at Eastham on the radio. Much to my surprise, they answered (my radio’s only a little 5W handheld and we were very low to the ground) and said that we were clear to go. They also wrong-footed me by asking for an ETA at Latchford Locks, and I fumbled with the charts and guessed 2 hours time.

Then the gates were opened and off we went into the massive basin formed by the junction of the Weaver with the Ship Canal. Keeping in the marked channel was easy enough, and a line of bright yellow buoys showed that we needed to keep clear of the sluices that let the Weaver out into the Mersey beyond. Once everything calmed down, it became clear that the MSC was going to be fine – it was a clear, sunny, calm day, the canal was wide but not enormous (it’s no bigger than the Thames) and everyone was helpful. We passed Runcorn Docks and saw two ships: a smaller craft being loaded with salt and a larger tanker, the Stolt Kittiwake, both safely moored up at the quay. Beyond Runcorn the canal becomes very quiet – just embankments covered in brambles – until we arrived at Latchford Locks in Warrington.

Locks on the MSC are paired – one very large lock and one smaller one – but at Latchford and the other locks we were directed to the ship lock. The locks do have intermediate gates to save a bit of water though! The lock walls are very high – at least 5m above water level – and it’s quite hard to see what’s going on up top as you maneuver. We stopped where we were directed, and the lock-keepers let down ropes to us at both ends – we tied on our special 50′ ropes and they pulled them up. Then another vessel came in behind us – the MSC Company’s maintenance boat “Buffalo”. Being regulars, they didn’t tie up, just bobbed around in the lock about 20m behind us, with the occasional burst of engine power to keep them in place. The locks fill very gently – after all, you wouldn’t want to bounce a seagoing ship around – and from the side, much as the 1930s Grand Union locks do. The gates, interestingly, are powered by the original water-hydraulic system much beloved of Victorian engineers, so the whole thing operates in total silence – the electric motors pumping the water are hidden away in the accumulator towers, so the gates open and close absolutely silently.

What surprised me is that we attracted a crowd. Latchford Lock, despite being part of a still-working port, is a public place. People cross the lock-gates and sluices on foot and on bikes, and stand around on the lockside just as they would in a smaller canal. A guy on a bike chatted to me, turned out he owned a boat on the Bridgewater canal but had never yet seen a narrowboat on the Ship Canal…

Buffalo called us on the radio – could they pass us? Yes, no problem – they left us for dust while we were still tied up. On we went to the next locks at Irlam, passing through the petrochemicals berth at Partington, where you have to turn off all your gas appliances, and admiring the rather fine graffiti. Crews have painted their vessels’ names on the piers, and in the middle of one is a much older slogan saying “God Bless our Sovereign”!

As we approached Irlam locks we passed Buffalo tied up at the wharf (having lunch) and then the radio crackled into life – Buffalo’s master was calling another vessel (“Daisy”) saying “we’ve got the narrowboat, they’re just passing us”. We caught a glimpse of something big-ish, presumably Daisy, as the lock gates closed – they turned around and went back towards Partington- and further research has revealed that there’s a pusher tug called “Daisy Dorado” that operates the ship canal’s container shuttle barge between Irlam to Liverpool, carrying wine for Tesco amongst other cargoes.

The next stretch, from Irlam to Barton is again pretty quiet, though we did see the remains of various wharves, including those that were once used to load Manchester’s sewage sludge into barges for dumping in the Irish Sea before that practice became illegal. Eastham said that there was no traffic above Irlam today so we didn’t have to worry about meeting other vessels.

Beyond Barton you start getting into the urban area, passing under the M60 and then shortly under the famous Swing Aqueduct. Sadly, there wasn’t a narrowboat on it to wave to at the time, though we did see one crossing it later!

Around the final bend towards Manchester and we pass the wharves used for cereals, cement and scrap metal, and finally to Mode Wheel Locks, who weren’t ready for us. I held Innocenti carefully against the large pier below the lock while they let the water out for us. Once through the lock, we suddenly went through an invisible dividing line which separates the scruffy-and-still-working canal and docks from the shiny and regenerated Salford Quays. We nipped round No 9 Dock to look at the new Media City building site (the new BBC Manchester buildings) and then the phone rang – it was a guy called Eric, who would operate the final lock of the day. We bid farewell to the Ship Canal and locked up through Pomona Lock into the Bridgewater Canal, which felt very small by comparison! We went on and moored at Castlefield and played hunt-the-water-point (for my future reference, there are two water points at Castlefield – one on the left just under the railway viaduct where you can’t see it, and one more awkwardly on the right next to the line of moored residential boats and the locked swing bridge).

A good day all round. I would say to my fellow boaters that the Manchester Ship Canal is well worth a visit, and that the complexities and costs shouldn’t put you off. The full details of the preparatory work is in my previous post, but here are a few hints:

• Get a VHF radio, even if it’s only to listen to – you can at least hear the other traffic talking to Eastham. To maintain full VHF contact with Eastham you will, however, need a proper vessel-mounted radio – the range isn’t far enough on a handheld. The locks have radio in their offices, but only at Latchford did the lock respond to my VHF call – the locky had a portable on his belt.
• If it’s a nice day, tape the Admiralty chart to the cabin roof with masking tape so you can read it easily. If you’re feeling efficient, plot your position on it every hour, just like a real ship would do!
• The IWA’s navigation notes are quite out-of-date now, though they contain some useful hints. You should ignore everything anyone tells you about needing to throw a rope up to the lock-keepers, though – they’ll let a line down to you, which is much easier
• On the subject of ropes, longer is definitely better. The minimum is fifty feet (15m), but we had 20m at both ends and still the lock-keepers had issues attaching to their bollards in some of the locks. If I did it again I’d be tempted to bend the long rope onto my existing mooring ropes to gain a bit of extra slack.
• The locks fill gently and have very smooth brick walls. You don’t need to worry about being thrown around by the currents
• It is expensive. The ship canal costs £125, plus £22 for Pomona Lock if your boat isn’t Bridgewater registered. The Admiralty charts are £21.50, plus postage. A survey should cost £30. All told, I spent a shade over £200, including buying a second long rope as I already had one.
• Wear lifejackets, not least because it gives the impression to the MSC staff that you’re taking it seriously. Interestingly, MSC lockies don’t wear lifejackets, though BW and EA ones do…
• Everyone is very helpful, so don’t worry about dealing with jobsworths or or being intimidated by commercial traffic. Eastham will hold you up if they’re expecting something really big, so the odds of meeting anything bigger than Buffalo or a Mersey Ferry are pretty small.

Day 48: Weston Marsh Lock to Castlefield, 29 miles and 6 locks.

This is the start of a much-overdue series of catch-up posts, as I’ve had a busy week in the North-West!

So, winding the tape back to Friday 13th August, I spent the day in Nantwich, getting the laundry done and buying lots of provisions. Nantwich is a very foody town, with at least one excellent butcher – I didn’t go in the second one as the first one seemed unbeatably good! Mmm, meat products! In the evening I was joined by Dave, Richard, Claire and Steve, and we all piled into the all-you-can-eat Indian buffet restaurant in the old station building before retiring to the boat.

A lot of Saturday morning was absorbed by filling Innocenti’s water tank – to summarise, a large water tank plus low water pressure equals a long wait! After that we motored on, between the showers, and went down a few locks before arriving in Middlewich for the night. I did very little all day apart from making gallons of tea…
Day 46: Nantwich to Middlewich, 15 miles and 7 locks.

Sunday was an altogether different day. We had a short journey from Middlewich to Anderton, along the relatively busy Trent and Mersey canal. We were booked down the lift at Anderton at 3:15, and in fact arrived there just after 2. After mooring up, meeting Mike and Shelley, having yet more tea, biscuits, icecreams etc, it was finally time to go down the lift. The first hazard, though, is to negotiate a tight bend into a narrowish entrance under the towpath footbridge. This I got wrong, and there was a large clunk is 20 tonnes of slowly-moving narrowboat collided with an even greater weight of immovable concrete bank, shortly followed by general squealings from the cabin as the impact had knocked over the milk jug. In the ensuing chaos to mop up the spilled milk (no-one cried, but there was quite a lot of agitated chatter…) my mop got broken and it was discovered that there was no more milk to make tea with. Disaster!

Meanwhile, at the blunt end, I was manoeuvering Innocenti into the long trough-like aqueduct leading from the canal to the lift itself. In order to prevent a lift malfunction from draining the entire T&M pound (which would be somewhat catastrophic as the canal is on the same level all the way to Manchester and Wigan!), there’s a guillotine gate at the entrance to the aqueduct. You go in and stop, and they close the gate behind you. Then the water level is adjusted slightly (the T&M is not necessarily always at the same level as the lift caissons) and the guillotine is opened at the other end into the lift caisson itself. In we went, tied up the stern as instructed and killed the engine. Then we sat and waited while the trip boat was loaded into the other caisson. Once all was secure, the gates close and the lift very slowly begins to move. It’s a genuinely impressive piece of engineering, and all works like clockwork. The lift operator kindly explained what was going on. To start with the boat moves very slowly, and the caisson judders as the hydraulic oil goes through check valves to stop it dropping too fast. Eventually the motion becomes smooth and we drop fifty feet into the basin below. Once the gates were opened, we went out into the River Weaver. In view of the milk situation, I took a decision to nip into Northwich and get some. Northwich is 20 minutes upstream – in the wrong direction from our final destination. We pulled up on the public wharf and Dave, Richard and I went on a milk foray. We found a lot of shut shops, this being 4pm on a Sunday. Aldi had literally just closed as we arrived. As a last-ditch effort, I went into a Costa Coffee and negotiated for a plastic bag of milk and we returned triumphantly to the boat. Now we had a difficult situation – we needed to crack on down river before the lock-keepers closed the locks at 6pm. So, full speed ahead! Unfortunately, after about 30 mins or so, the rev counter suddenly died. “Oh heck”, I thought (or equivalent words to that effect), “the fanbelt’s snapped!” and I removed the deckboard. What I saw was an intact fanbelt and a lot of bilgewater. A brief investigation revealed that Innocenti’s rather poorly-executed weedhatch allows prop wash into the engine bay at speeds exceeding 5mph, a feature I had not previously discovered. On with the bilge pumps and a slower speed. We got to the first lock, at Saltersford, just after 5. The Weaver locks are large – like the Thames ones – and there was a lock-keeper on hand. We asked him what our odds were of getting to the next locks, at Dutton, before closing. He was a bit dubious, but agreed to ring his colleague. We were clear to go, but we needed to get a move on! There followed one of the slowest races against time known to man, as we cracked on down the Weaver towards Dutton at 4mph, all the weedhatch would stand, trailing (clean) bilgewater in our wake and looking at our watches. Fortunately, the engine suffered no damage, the lock-keeper was friendly and we arrived just a few minutes before 6pm. We gave him a bottle of beer to say thankyou for staying late. The real imperative for getting through Dutton was that we’d have missed our booked passage into the Ship Canal the following morning had we been held up.
Anyway, we continued down the lower reaches of the Weaver, enjoying the quiet rural nature of the river and drinking well-earned beers until the wind brought a whiff of petrochemicals and we found ourselves approaching the swing bridge at Frodsham. Here we dropped off Claire to get a train back to Manchester and continued another mile to the lock at Weston, right opposite the chemical works.
This is a funny place – oddly tranquil with no-one about, and with salty sea air coming off the Mersey Estuary. There were also excellent blackberries! We moored for the night on a handy pontoon by the lock, ate our sausages and ratatouille and retired for the night.

Day 47: Middlewich to Weston Marsh Lock, 20 miles, 3 locks and one big boat lift!

Today i’ve done lots of locks – 17 in total – and started in the pouring rain. Fortunately, by lock 3 of the Audlem flight the sun came out and I took my waterproofs off. I stopped briefly at Audlem Mill, after thirteen locks, and bought an ice-cream. After that I found myself in a queue to do the last two locks in the flight, and the queue reappeared at the two locks at Hack Green, next to the Secret Nuclear Bunker…

I’ve finally moored on the edge of Nantwich and treated myself to fish and chips.

Day 45: 8 miles and 17 locks. Total so far 460 miles and 347 locks.

This week I’m on the Shropshire Union Canal, affectionately known as the “Shroppie” by canal buffs. It’s very calm and tranquil, but popular with boaters. The little villages on the Shroppie are bustling with boats – far more here than in the heart of Birmingham!

Yesterday I cruised up from the junction to Wheaton Aston, and bought a spare fan belt from the little canalside garage – one of those amazing places that sells nearly everything, and can get what it hasn’t got!

Today I’ve carried on up to Shebdon and moored on a quiet stretch. I went for a walk in the woods to go and look at Knighton Reservoir and its feeder, but a lot of the footpaths on the map have disappeared, and intriguingly, so has the canal feeder. I’m guessing it’s been culverted.

Day 43: 11 miles and 0 locks. Total so far 443 miles and 320 locks. No thesis progress in terms of words – I’ve been doing some software and experimental work.

We headed off before 9 on Sunday morning, and made brisk progress along the empty canal to Wolverhampton, arriving at about 11. Here begins the long flight of 21 narrow locks down off the Black Country plateau to the Staffordshire and Worcestershire canal.
We locked down fairly briskly and arrived at the bottom by mid-afternoon. Having decided that we didn’t fancy the look of the one rather tired pub near the supermarket (aside to Wolverhampton businesspeople – a pub somewhere close to this important three-canal junction would make a mint!), we considered curry in Wolverhampton. At this point I got a text from James and Amy on Lucky Duck, saying that they’d passed Innocenti while we were out. I suggested to an already tired Nicola that we might go and help them back up the Wolverhampton locks, and she (spurred on by thoughts of curry) agreed. The run back to Wolverhampton was very brisk indeed, and we then availed ourselves of a copious curry (“largest naans in Wolverhampton”) at Jirvan’s Balti House before I took Nicola to the station and went back to the boat by bus.

Day 41: 8 miles and 21 locks (plus another 21 helping Lucky Duck…)

I spent two full days in Birmingham, doing various odd jobs and (ahem) relatively little thesis work. The odd jobs did include getting all the Manchester Ship Canal paperwork sorted and fixing the minor problem with the starter motor though, so I’m happy with that.

Today I’ve had Nicola on board for a short cruise to the Black Country Living Museum – we left Brum in the drizzle, went up three locks at Smethwick, noodled about under the M5 and finally headed off along the Old Main Line towards Dudley. The New Main Line I did on the way down – it’s ruler-straight and rather tedious with little scenery. By contrast, the Old Main Line is just as wide and deep, but much more interesting. As you get towards Tipton the canal gets clearer and the margins become full of waterlilies.
At this point we met the steam narrowboat “President” and butty “Kildare” coming the other way – I seem to meet them every time I come to the West Midlands – and I managed to get some video of them chuffing past.
Just around the corner is the Black Country Living Museum, where we moored for the afternoon and overnight. It’s got trams, trolleybuses, a coal mine, historic houses and other buildings illustrating industrial life in this part of the world. It also serves traditional Black Country fare – there was a colossal queue for fish-and-chips-fried-in-dripping-and-wrapped-in-newspaper, so I had faggots and gravy in the cafe instead…

The museum is adjacent to Dudley Tunnel, which isn’t a traditional canal tunnel at all, but rather a series of limestone mines linked by canals. Some of the junctions have been opened out now, so you go through a sequence of tunnels, passing briefly out into the light again between them. The Dudley Canal Trust operate three electric trip boats, and also have a tugboat that can tow a narrowboat through, provided it has a sufficiently low cabin, as the headroom is very limited!

Day 40: Birmingham to Tipton Junction, 8 miles and 3 locks. Tomorrow, the Wolverhampton flight of 21 locks!

I like Birmingham, for reasons I can’t really explain. I think it’s partly the fact that it’s such a nice place to moor, coupled with the lively and pedestrian-friendly shopping centre and the fact that the accent always makes me smile. This morning I went to the laundrette, a normal chore whenever I have a day in a city. When did you last see a new laundrette? So far, every one I’ve been in has had an early-sixties feel, like the one in Cambridge, and the air is thick with the sweat of assets. Pablo’s Laundrette (5 minutes from the canal, map here), is however new and shiny and open until 8pm. The manageress was friendly too, which is always a bonus.
In my other tasks for today, I went round to Sherborne Wharf, to talk about Manchester Ship Canal certificates. Going on the Ship Canal requires a modicum of preparatory bureaucracy, which I suspect is designed by the Ship Canal Company to deter the casual boater. For the benefit of other boaters, here’s what you need to do:

– call the Ship Canal company. You need to speak to the harbourmaster’s office. Pleasure craft applications are currently dealt with by Colin Chambers (Colin.Chambers@shipcanal.co.uk or 0151 327 1461), who’s very helpful. He will send you a “fact pack” in the post, which consists of: two application forms, a copy of the Navigation Bye-Laws, a list of approved surveyors and the Transit Notes – a diagrammatic map of the canal.
– you fill in the top part of the application form, and enclose a copy of your third-party insurance certificate (you must have £3m cover, mine has this as standard)
– you find a suitable person to complete the bottom part of the form, the “Certificate of Seaworthiness”. This needs to be a marine surveyor who’s approved by the Company, or a boat-builder who’s a member of the British Marine Federation. If you’re outside the north-west, a BMF member is your best bet.
– to qualify as seaworthy, your boat must have: “an adequate anchor and cable”, two warps (ropes) at least 50 feet long, two fire extinguishers (you need these for Boat Safety Certificate anyway), “sufficient life saving apparatus” (in my case a lifejacket per crewmember and a lifebuoy), an Admiralty chart (number 3478 – should cost about £22) and a “current tidal almanac”. This list is defined in law, being the Third Schedule to the Manchester Ship Canal Act 1960. Quite what the point of the tidal almanac is I’m not sure, since the canal itself isn’t tidal, though I suppose it’s reasonable to assume that anyone making the passage into the tidal Mersey estuary would need to know the state of the tide.
– having got your surveyor to make the inspection and sign the form, you send everything off to the Ship Canal Company at least 48 hours in advance, along with the transit fee, which depends on the journey you’re making. For the Weaver-Manchester segment this is about £125.

Anyway, Sherborne Wharf have agreed to do my certificate tomorrow, and my Admiralty chart is on order and should arrive tomorrow morning (fingers crossed!)…

I had a very productive morning on Tuesday, revisiting some software that I’d given up on and came within a hairsbreadth of getting it working. I reckoned it was worth a day or two’s effort before I wrote it up as a failure! Another day or so and I might actually have it working, which would be great.

Anyway, in the afternoon I locked up the five locks at Knowle on my own – the locks are closely spaced and I was able to use the “back-stitch” technique of allowing the lock with the boat in it to fill while going back to close the gates on the previous look and then going forward to open the gates on the next one. You do walk a long way, but it’s so much easier to drive the boat from lock chamber to lock chamber rather than try and moor up singlehandedly between locks, especially where the pounds are short.

After Knowle the canal becomes very quiet – I saw very few moving boats, but an awful lot of debris in the canal, drawn out of urban Birmingham on the slight current generated by the lock flight. A car wheel, with tyre, floated by, accompanied by a builder’s helmet, some roadsigns, various footballs, and countless plastic bottles and other items of jetsam – all rather incongruous on the otherwise still very rural canal. Once through Catherine de Barnes, the canal enters a very long wooded cutting in Solihull which is mostly straight and quite boring. I was hoping to get a view of the Land Rover factory, but it’s hidden behind high fences. At Tyseley the canal emerges from the cutting and becomes a more typical inner-city setting, with industrial and post-industrial buildings along its banks. Finally I arrived at my destination for the day, Camp Hill top lock. There’s a little BW compound here, with a sanitary station, showers and secure moorings. I asked the lock-keeper, who was just knocking off, where was best to moor, as the little mooring arm was full. He suggested that I go on the water point overnight, so I did.
I mooched off to a nearby supermarket in the hope of getting a sturdy plastic box to cover the generator with (the last one disappeared in Claydon, mysteriously), but they didn’t have anything suitable. Returning to the boat, I met a Dutch family in a hired narrowboat that were stuck in a lock – the pound above them was almost completely drained. I showed the lady how to let water through the flight to refill the pound, went back to my boat for my windlass, and then helped them get through to the top. They then moored alongside me and thanked me profusely.

Day 38: Knowle Bottom Lock to Camp Hill top lock, 10 miles and 5 locks.

Today I decided to cruise all day, as I needed to get off the water point and that would allow me to get all the way to central Brum without having to stop in Aston overnight. It was also raining, heavy drizzly rain, the kind that gets you wet. Much faffing ensued as the Dutch family reversed off the mooring and headed to Knowle, and I went into the first lock just as two boatloads of Scouts and Cubs arrived who wanted the water point…
I locked down slowly in the rain, and the Scouts caught me up. In fact, they did the bottom three locks for me, since they were so mob-handed, and I rewarded the gaggle of girls who’d manfully pushed the gates with a packet of hobnobs, they were very chuffed. At the bottom of the six Camp Hill locks is Bordesley Junction. I turned left, passed through a nicely-restored stop lock (the Warwick Bar, which once seperated the BCN canals from the Grand Union system) and then turned right at the junction onto the Digbeth Branch of the Birmingham & Fazeley canal. A sign here said “Be aware of the Somali mugger, call 999!” – nice!
Having done six locks down at Camp Hill, I was then faced with six locks up at Ashted, surrounded by a lot of empty plots where industrial buildings had been demolished. Just before the top lock is Ashted tunnel, a narrow, drain-like tube 100m long, but with a towpath inside. At the top is Aston Science park, where there are nice secure moorings, and I stopped for a bite to eat.

I then joined the Birmingham & Fazeley main line and locked up the 13 Farmer’s Bridge locks, where I was assisted by a helpful retired gent who was dawdling on the towpath on his way back from the Records Office – he’d been doing some geneaology. He and I chatted about canals, and it turned out that he’d worked for a firm that made equipment for forges and foundries. He helped me to the top lock and I managed to bag a 14 day mooring space right there, after some entertaining reversing manoeuvres!

I’m now in Brum until Saturday, so no more cruising ‘tll then. I have some odd jobs and plenty of PhD work to do though!

Day 39: Camp Hill top lock to Cambrian Wharf, Birmingham: 3 miles and 25 locks.
Total so far: 407 miles and 294 locks.

This afternoon I said farewell to Mike, who had to go back to work, and plodded on up the Grand Union to Knowle. The long pound between Hatton and Knowle was extremely low and I went aground in a few places. Beyond the junction with the Stratford canal at Kingswood, the canal becomes quieter – most people follow the guidebooks’ advice that the route via Lapworth Locks and Kings Norton is prettier. I’ve been the “pretty way” twice before, so this time I’ve chosen to go the other way. So far, the canal has been quite pleasant, and Knowle Locks (which I walked round to have a look at after mooring up) are very nicely situated and well-kept. Interestingly, they have two side ponds each at different levels, both apparently disused and full of bulrushes and moorhens. I’m guessing this was an advanced feature installed when the locks were widened in the 1930s.

Tomorrow I’m planning to be in urban Birmingham, so I’m enjoying the tranquil rural setting while it lasts!

Day 37: Hatton Station to Knowle Bottom Lock, 7 miles and no locks.
Total so far 394 miles and 264 locks. Thesis 12311 words and 64 pages.