Tuesday 12th April
I knew there would be trouble today when I saw 1 magpie on the towpath! The day started badly when I knocked the spout off the teapot with a glass. I didn’t break the glass though, just the teapot.
The original plan for the day was to go to Shipley, stop and get some shopping and then move on to Saltaire. All went well to start with, although there was only one visitor mooring where we wanted to get off and go to the shops it was free and we breasted up. A notice on the wall said it was a 24 hour mooring but announced that you mustn’t moor there when the waterbus is due. As there was no timetable to tell us what times the waterbus may need to moor there we didn’t worry about it.
George decided he needed a wee and getting him off the back of ours and over the back of B and B’s boat was a bit of a palaver but we managed. Aldi was very close to the mooring so we went there first and got stocked up. Then we went into town and did some more shopping at Asda and Wilkinson’s (new teapot) before returning to the boat just in time to see the waterbus going under the bridge! By the time they had turned round we were gone!
So it was off to Saltaire but unfortunately the only decent moorings in Saltaire were for 6 hours maximum between 9 am and 6 pm so they weren’t any good. We had to do the next lock and swing bridge and then tried to moor along the bank but it was too shallow so we just couldn’t get in. By this time we were fast approaching the aqueduct and the next staircase of locks. We had to do those too and this was where a near disaster occured. Well, it was a disaster but it could have been a lot worse.
This staircase had short chambers, like the others and was leaking badly, like the others so our gas locker was getting a soaking again but it was when we got into the top chamber things went wrong. I opened the ground paddle just like I had done all the others but unbeknown to me or Barbara the water was coming in the side of the lock with such force that it was spraying up the side of their boat, under their cratch cover and into their cratch! Unfortunately they had their front doors open and the water was going in to the cratch so fast it couldn’t drain from the scuppers quick enough to prevent it from pouring into the boat as well!
Suddenly Barbara noticed Mac was paddling in the cratch and shouted to me to drop the ground paddle. By this time the water had traversed the whole length of the inside of the boat! We continued to fill the lock very slowly and eventually emerged from it and moored up. Fortunately B and B were able to dry everything out and no serious damage has been done.
I have to say I feel really bad about the whole thing although everyone keeps telling me it wasn’t my fault. We have never seen a ground paddle as ferocious as that one before and there was nothing to suggest it would cause a problem like that. In fact the previous ones had all been very benign.
After this incident we all needed to go to the pub, in fact we went twice, once for a drink and then later on for dinner and another drink! Lessons have been learned from today’s events and we will all be putting our cratch covers down, shutting our front doors and sealing our gas locker lids before we tackle the Bingley 3 and 5 rises on Wednesday!
