First let me say we had no plans to stop at Cuckoo Wharf tonight.
We set off at our normal 10am. the temperature had just touched freezing over night and there was a tiny touch of frost on the grass. We didn’t see any boats on the move today but we did see several Kingfishers darting along. With the lack of boat movements the water is much clearer than usual which is good as not only could I see the growing weed and fish before Minworth I could also see the bike behind the lock gate an the Aston flight.
For some strange reason I like seeing chickens running round the garden and these ones have free range of quite a smart one.
As we approached the Minworth three locks we past this chap standing up to his thighs in the water just looking.
We had a problem at each of the locks, thankfully they are on this years stoppage list, but I have my doubts that all the faults will be fixed as I have been reporting lock one for the past 4 years, we will see. The top of this truck was just visible over the wall of one of the vehicle repair yards, unfortunately I couldn’t see the rest of it, maybe I will try standing on the roof on our way home.
Continuing on it wasn’t long before we reached Troutpool bridge ( what a lovely name) and under the work building. the reflections from the light coming in from the side looked loads better than this photograph shows.At Salford junction we turned up the Aston flight still on the B&F canal, passing Cuckoo Wharf we read the sign carefully, there were only two boats there and one was on the 30 minute service area, but which are the 14 day and which are long term I don’t have a clue. I said to Diana if ever we needed to moor I would just drop onto any vacant spot, I didn’t expect that to come back and bite me. We carried on up through lock 11, that is where a rather smart bike was behind the top gate and then on to lock 10. Diana walked to set the lock, finding the top gate wide open and as I nosed the bottom gate she walked back to say the pound above was a bit low, bit of an under statement with les than a foot of water 6 feet above the top gate. Normally I would just refill a pound, but this is quite a long one so would need water dropping down from Aston Junction and would take quite so time. Decision time, and that was to drop down backward and moor at Cuckoo Wharf for the night, contact CRT and we will then do all this flight and Farmers Bridge flight tomorrow. So we reversed back to lock 11, dropped down backwards and then reversed back to Cuckoo wharf for the night.. This can be seen on the map. Once tied up I rang CRT to report it and tell them we plan to continue up the flight tomorrow.
As I type this at 5pm it has started raining, will it stop by the morning? will it have filled the pound?
3 comments:
Despite the signs, there are no visitor moorings at Cuckoo Wharf. I keep reporting the sign to CRT and they keep confirming there are no visitor moorings there so there isn't a sign there to remove !!! Perhaps you will have more luck reporting it.
There is still a sign at Cuckoo Wharf, maybe if you can take a photo and send it to CRT, the penny may drop! We emptied the cassette in the elsan there, it still shows facilities in our Nicholson's. Perhaps this will need to be confirmed as well.
Good luck with the trip up Farmer's Bridge. I wonder how far the workers have got with the removal of the cladding?
Free range poultry large fine currently as ALL poultry has to be locked up because of the wide spread of Avian Flu.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/avian-influenza-bird-flu#public
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