Sunday 29th May
What a day, the weather, up until about 3pm, has been absolute shite! Windy and raining – sometimes light rain, sometimes hard rain but nearly always some form of rain! We have travelled the fantastic distance of 2 miles and 10 locks, one of which, Library Lock in Todmorden, had a guillotine bottom gate, just to confuse and confound us a bit!
Most of the pounds today were overflowing with water, a bit of a difference to when we were on the way up to Summit. This made the top gates of the locks rather difficult to open as the water was rushing over some of them about 6 inches deep. We had to do a few adjustments at each lock to try and get the levels right and soldiered on, battling the water levels and the elements.
When we got to Library Lock in Todmorden we had a different challenge, a guillotine bottom gate. We read the instructions carefully and opened the paddles to empty the lock. However, there were two paddles but only one would open. Whether this was by design or not we didn’t know but we had so much water pouring in at the top gates, both over and under (see photo), with only one paddle letting it out it took ages for the lock to level. The guillotine gate was electrically operated and would not go up until the water was level. Eventually it opened and we proceeded to the 24 hour moorings near the sanitary station.
After tea, water filling and loo emptying we had to decide if we were going to stay on the 24 hour moorings or carry on. In view of the fact that there was no grass to speak of for Mac to go in and the tow path on the other side of the canal, where there was grass, was inaccessible from the bridge where we were, due to refurbishments, we decided to move on. Just as we did this the heavens opened and the wind really got up. We got into the next lock and went indoors to wait for it to blow over. We were wishing we had stayed on the 24 hour moorings, grass or no grass.
We got underway again and the weather started to improve. After the next lock we found a nice place to moor up, hurrah! The wind dropped and the sun came out as well. Ken and I walked back in to Todmorden as I had spotted a pet shop on the way through and thought I may be able to get some things for Himself there. Unfortunately it was a very small shop and they didn’t have what I wanted. We also found Lidl, got a couple of things there and found out there is also a Morrison’s in the town so we will be going back tomorrow for a stock up. I may get a sneaky look round the Factory Shop too!
After a look round the market, which was more of a carboot type sale really, we found a pub (well several but we only went in the one) called The Polished Knob. It used to be called the Black Swan, then The Mucky Duck (logical) but no one has any idea why they changed it to The Polished Knob! Anyway, they had Hyde’s Manchester’s Finest Bitter on for £2 a pint, very nice.
The forecast for tomorrow is worse than it was for today, time to batten down the hatches I think!
