Tuesday 29th March
Today we have travelled 10.5 miles from Keadby to Thorne, South Yorkshire. This trip included not 5 but 6 swing bridges (they have snuck a new one in here at Thorne!), the sliding railway bridge and an electrically operated lift bridge.
We had to wait for 2 trains to go before the sliding railway bridge could be opened. Then there was immediately the first of the manual swing bridges, that was Barbara’s. My first one was electric, hurrah! Barbara cheated at the next one – a BW man turned up and said he would do it for her. What he didn’t say was, the reason why he was doing it. As we approached we found out, there was a huge BW barge coming towards us at break neck speed. Ken had to do some nifty reversing to get out of the way!
My next one was really tough, I struggled to get it open and Ken had to help me shut it. Barbara had one more (so we thought) manual one and I had the electrially operated Wykewell lift bridge, then we entered Thorne.
It quickly became apparent that the way under the road bridge in Thorne was barred. A barrier across the water with a stop sign on usually does the trick! This was a new swing footbridge and Barbara got off to operate it. While she was trying to work out how to get the pedestrian gates shut, she pulled! A rather elderly gentleman, who obviously knew nothing about the workings of the bridge, was giving encouragement. I went up to help and we all stood reading and re-reading the instructions but to no avail, we just couldn’t get the gates to shut.
As luck would have it another boat arrived with a lady on who knew the foibles of this bridge and under her instruction we soon got it to work successfully. Barbara’s beau disappeared once we had done this, bless.
Just beyond this bridge we found the visitor moorings and got in. It’s quite nice here with plenty of green for the dogs. Later we went into town which has all the shops you need including Sainsbury’s which we will go to tomorrow for a stocking up session.
We will probably stay here tomorrow and Ken is threatening to show the side of the boat a paint roller, oooer!
