Below Grindley Brook Thursday 22 December 2016

We woke to a smashing morning, the sun climbing in a clear blue sky, but this morning we were not leaving at our normal 10am. My son and grandsons were coming up with our Christmas presents from Gloucestershire. They arrived about 11am and after us opening their presents to us and having coffee we adjourned to The Dusty Miller for lunch.

They departed about 2pm and we set off on our way, I had only gone about 100 mts when a  Keir Construction came hurrying along the towpath calling to me. He found a BW key in the Lift bridge and thought it may be ours, he had seen us leave but didn’t see us unmoor.

At bridge 22 where Keir had been working all the pipe that had been used to transport the water past the drained section was laying on the bank. I would like to see how they seal the dam round this. The pipe lengths are just a push fit together but to make sure they don’t blow apart the screw lengths of flat bar across the joint. As we passed under the bridge you could see the new brickwork under the water.

As most blogs seam to have a quiz at Christmas her is mine. How many other locations do you know where the winding hole has a name?

There is a lot of work going on at Quoisley Lock with some very heavy stones topping the wall at the mouth of the lock, This bit of wall takes a good battering as boat approach the lock and get caught by the flow of water from the bywash coming in on the left hand side. This canal takes water from the river Dee at Horseshoe Falls and transports it to the reservoir at Hurleston so there is a flow of about 13.7 million imperial gallons per day flowing out of each bywash. Willey Moor Lock shows what happens opposite these bywashes, as you can see the top of the piling is completely flattened in the section leading up to the lock. This is due to the 14 tons of hire boat that goes sideways into it because the holiday makers are not prepared for the cross flow, that is on top of some of the private owners who don’t allow for it as well.

By now it was 4 pm. a little after sunset and the light was fading, we only planned to do one more lock today  and that was Poveys Lock and once through that we were looking for somewhere to moor for the night, the plan was the visitor moorings with rings just below the Grindley Brook locks, but we thought there may be other boats there and I wanted to run the engine for another hour to get a bit more into the batteries tonight. Also I wanted somewhere with no trees as high winds and storm Beryl is forecast, so we stopped about halfway between the last lock and Grindley Brook bottom at about 1620 hrs.

Today’s Journey

5 miles, 4 Locks in 2½ hours