Aire and Calder Navigation
6:45 Oleanna bumped the side, Off Roader was on it’s way. I peeked out the front windows and could see the light at the lock was red, as the big boat came past it turned to green. The bumping continued for about half an hour until calm waters returned. We seem to go bump a while before any boat is seen, either the lock above emptying or the one below filling. I made sure I tightened our ropes this morning, they had stretched a touch since we tied up.
I shaded in my ideas for the front cloth for panto. In past years I’ve hand drawn the basic design on all the sketches, but I think this year I may just scan the design and then stick it onto my sketches. Yes I could do all of this on the computer, but that would actually take me far longer and I’d be more concerned with how to do it than what I’d be using it for, designing panto. So I’ll use it as a short cut my way.
I checked in with Frank after his operation earlier this week. He was on pretty good form this morning, Great British Bake Off Black Forest Gateaux setting his gastric juices going. By the end of the day his mood had changed as he’d had news of his next medical journey. My PA duties will continue for a while. I’m beginnning to think I talk to Frank more now than I did when we worked together at the SJT.
The roofers had said they’d be working all day today, but their van was booked in to be mended so they just turned up to check things were water tight and vanished again! Later on the scaffolders arrived to take the towers down. Mick told them that the roof wasn’t finished, infact it was hardly started! They didn’t believe him so wanted to see for themselves, maybe Mick hadn’t noticed them finishing! Their reaction was as expected, we don’t know who’d told them to take it down, maybe they’d got the wrong site and they should have been dismanteling the scaffoldng where our roofers had actually been working this week!
More scenes of panto were worked through during the day until Mick arrived back. I had a walk up the towpath to stretch my legs and then we tucked into a Sainsbury’s curry with a glass or two of wine. Stocks are pretty low onboard at the moment, so a shopping trip will be required over the weekend.
The dry weather is affecting canal and river levels around the country. Last week there was advance notice from C&RT that the Leeds & Liverpool Canal was likely to be put on restricted hours or even be closed to navigation. Today notice was given that the lock flights between Skipton and the bottom of Wigan will be closing at the end of 22nd May, not quite a weeks time. Then the locks towards Leeds including Bingley will be open between Thursday and Monday with reduced opening hours to help support water conservation. Thankfully we’d not planned on crossing the Pennines this year as all routes will soon be closed. The Caldon Canal has also been closed from Hazelhurst Junction down to Froghall, therefore the water feeding into the canal can still head down to the Trent and Mersey.
Research into our planned main destination for the year, Beverley from the River Hull is bringing up obsticles too. More info on this on another post, but it’s looking like we’ll be postponing our plans to another year sadly.
0 locks, 0 miles, 12 sketches, 2 basic portal designs, 3 scenes still to do, 0 roofing done! 1 set of scaff still erected, 1 Nadia going to win, 1 stern washed down, 2 trains, 1 Mick, 2 beers, 4 glasses of wine.