Sunday 1st May
It’s been another bright but really windy day today. We have travelled about 11.5 miles and are moored at Riley Green. Fortunately the 6 locks we had to do were in Blackburn and not out in the country, otherwise it could have been more difficult than it was with this gusting wind.
Despite this the locks were a trial, some of them were in a pretty bad state of repair. Some leaked very badly (see photo of Ken trying to avoid getting wet!) At two of them the water was pouring over the top gates filling the lock, then pouring over the bottom gates and flooding the pound, then pouring over the top gates of the next one. We had to do a bit of water management to prevent the sanitary station and other assorted buildings ending up ankle deep in water when we came through lock 55! A couple of the locks did have very interesting gate opening gear (see photo) which made it a lot easier to open the gates, so that was an upside.
We finally made it to Riley Green about 1-30 pm after a 7-30 am start, not too bad. Conveniently there is a nice pub, The Boatyard Inn, a stone’s throw from here so off we toddled with George who, on remembering how long it took to get to the last pub, was a bit reluctant! However he was pleased to find this trip was not a repeat performance. He met some nice people with a Lhasa Apso who he quite liked and he met a chocolate labrador who he didn’t think was quite so nice and was very vocal about it!
B and B didn’t come to the pub (we haven’t completely led them astray yet!) preferring to have a little kip. As we are not moving on until Tuesday and as it is Barry’s birthday tomorrow we will go back there for a meal tomorrow night.
