Yesterday, leaving the mooring there was about an hour to get to the bottom of the Napton Lock Flight which is the only significant obstacle before Fenny Compton about 6 hours away.
Sometimes things go well, sometimes they don’t. Today they went well. By this I mean from a narrow boaters perspective, all the locks were in my favour either full, or being in late stages of opposite direction traffic so that there was no queueing and little waiting around. Today was 13 locks, so just 5 minutes extra waiting at each one counts for an extra hour to the journey. Today was 6 hours 15 minutes. Going downhill, the biggest problem is getting the bottom gates closed on exit, because there is no nice lock landing from which to nip up and close then. Most of the neat tricks for doing this easily tend to be risky, like jumping gates or climbing up lock walls from the boat in the throat of the lock. The locks are not of a consistent design either which makes developing a reliable method harder and sometimes there is just no alternative but to moor up below ad deals with them formally. So, it is always delightful when a windlass handed individual arrives at the lock from below and is on hand to take over, or even volunteer lock-keepers whom I had the benefit of on the third lock. (Claydon Flight). Photo is of the approach to the top lock. Leaving Fenny Compton the first “obstacle” is the opened out Fenny Tunnel although it is still known as “tunnel”. This is narrow in parts but not usually a problem viv a vis opposite direction traffic. At this time of the morning there was nobody. Then it’s just all about the locks, mostly spread out.
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