Category Archives: Narrowboat Life

Twelve Held Up. 7th September

Sykehouse Junction to Bramwith Junction, Sheffield and South Yorkshire Navigation

Well overnight those little blood sucking b**tards made a feast of me, by the end of today I could count ten bites. The only one that wasn’t complaining was the one I saw happen so I applied cream to the area straight away which most probably helped greatly. I don’t think I’ve been eaten so much since I was a child!

It was raining when we woke so we decided to let Tilly judge when we should move on today. The back doors opened for her to head off and explore. But she really couldn’t be bothered with getting soggy so early in the day, so she went straight back to bed.

The weather improved and by 11 we were rolling back the covers and getting ready to push off to cruise from one end of the New Junction Canal to the other. Opening in 1905 the canal was jointly funded by the Sheffield and South Yorkshire Navigation and the Aire and Calder Navigation. It links the River Don Navigation, Stainforth and Keadby Canal to the Aire and Calder and was the last waterway to be built in England for commercial purposes. It stretches 5.5 miles and is dead straight, however this doesn’t mean it’s plane sailing as there are 6 bridges and 1 lock to operate. It looks like originally there were another two bridges now long since gone.

Commercial traffic still works these waters with Exol Pride running oil between Hull and Rotherham. Mick had noticed on vessel finder that the big blue boat had set off for Hull today, we assume they’ll return to Goole tomorrow and then head up the canal Wednesday.

Once winded we crossed the Went Aqueduct passing under one of two footbridges on the canal that didn’t require any action from us. With nobody behind us today we’d not be leapfrogging our way along.

Soon at Sykehouse Road Lift Bridge I hopped off with the key of power. Waiting for a gap in traffic is all fine when you can see both ways, but from the control panel you can only see for about 20 foot either side. When crossing the road I’d noticed a car being overtaken and could still hear the engine running, however it wasn’t getting any closer. I’d expected it to have passed by now, so I had to walk back up onto the bridge and take a peek, there was the car, closer than before, still in the middle of the road with people stood round it chatting. It wouldn’t be coming anytime soon, so time to push the buttons. I held up 3 vehicles here.

At Kirk Lane Road Swing Bridge we could see the barriers coming down, closing the bridge to road traffic, someone was coming the other way, we sped up hoping they’d see us. Once swung the bow of their boat came into view, the chap at the helm spotting us and relaid the information to the button presser. 0 vehicles were held up here.

The amber light was lit at Sykehouse Lock, meaning it was on self service. This lock is often manned and on the several occasions we’ve been through I’ve only had to operate it once.

This lock is operated with the key of power, as most locks round here, but it does have one difference it has three control panels and a swing bridge right over the middle of it.

Your key goes in the central panel, which doesn’t have any buttons on it, but once turned your key is retained until all is closed again.

A click can be heard from the road barriers for the swing bridge. These are manually pushed round until they lock in position closing the track that crosses the lock. You then lift the locking latch and swing the bridge out of the way until it locks into another latch. This completes a circuit which enables the lock now to be operated, the two panels, one either end illuminating.

The chamber was empty so I opened the gates and Mick brought Oleanna in, he hung back and passed a rope around a bollard whilst I closed the gates and then walked up to the other end to the panel there. The lock is 215ft long, Oleanna seemed a very long way away.

Button pressed and held for 2 seconds and the sluices started to open, they do this in stages until fully opened. Once full the Water Level light illuminates and you can open the gates, letting your boat out.

Sluices closed, gates closed. Time to lift the latch on the swing bridge to be able to close it again. This releases the locked barriers. Once the bridge is back in it’s latch and the barriers are opened the central panel gives a little click meaning your key can be retrieved again.

0 vehicles were held up here, 2 cyclists stopped for a banana break before retracing their route southwards.

The next bridge is around 1.75 miles away, but along this stretch there used to be two more bridges, one obviously was a swing bridge, the other has left little if any evidence of it’s existence.

Kirkhouse Green Lift Bridge, I managed to get 6 vehicles here.

Top Lane Lift Bridge, the barriers came down as we got close, another boat coming through. We were waved on and passed under thanking the lady at the panel and only holding up 1 .

At Low Lane Swing Bridge you need to use your ears as the road bends round either side out of view. I couldn’t hear anyone approaching so pressed the button to open. Here we held up 2 vans.

Ahead were the Don Doors. These are two guillotine gates that are lowered at either end of the Don Aqueduct when the river below goes into flood. The aqueduct in normal times is full to the brim, any excess water spills over the sides down into the Don.

The last bridge is a footbridge over the canal just after the Don Doors, no key of power required here.

By now the sky was getting very dark again and the wind had picked up. After a couple of loads of washing yesterday we were wanting a top up, so we turned left towards Bramwith Lock where there is a water point just above it.

The tank filled as the heavens opened. A narrowboat came up the lock with the assistance of a C&RT Lockie. This chap is in charge of volunteers in the area. Last year they had 8, this year there are now 30 volunteer lock keepers and rangers, he’s kept very busy training them all.

Not wanting to descend the lock, we also didn’t want to get pinned against it’s top gates by the wind, so Mick decided to reverse back up to the junction before winding. We then pulled in to the towpath, tied up and let Tilly out. Well she wasn’t too pleased that it was raining and hung back for a while. Then she was off to stare into the friendly cover.

1 lock, 5.46 miles plus a little bit, 2 winds, 1 left, 3 lift bridges, 3 swing bridges, 2 footbridges, 12 held up, 2 worked for us, 0 leapfrogging/hopscotching, 4 hours, 1 steady internet connection, 1 hour homework, 1 hour setting up, 1 blustery wet day, 1 full tank, 1 load washing, 2 much drying inside, 1st performance at VET after lockdown, 10 bites itching, 24 hourly pill, 1 tube of anthisan!

&w=600&h=450]

https://goo.gl/maps/LrYW1jyNEHrrvg2B8

Patience Tilly Patience. 30th August

Naburn Water Point Pontoon to Naburn Visitor Moorings

Levels were certainly dropping this morning, but would they get low enough for us to head downstream tomorrow? Our main hope for the day was that the levels would come down enough, early enough for us to play do-ci-do and reverse back to the 48 hour moorings and let Tilly out. We all had our fingers crossed.

Just as we were about to tuck into breakfast we heard an engine and movements from outside. Had someone else arrived? Or was someone leaving?

It was the latter. The Abandoned boat was on the move. Kenny, the Lock Keeper had managed to track down the owner the other day, the chap hadn’t been pleased when he was told his boat had been moved. He apparently changed his mind when he heard that his boat would have sunk if no action had been taken. A couple of days ago smoke was seen coming from the abandoned boats chimney, but nobody saw him until this morning. He asked the hybrid boat to move out as he wanted to be off, so they did as requested. His manoeuvring meant that he ended up across the sterns of everyone else and required a push and then his bow pulling round so that he didn’t remain pinned to us for the rest of the day. He said nothing, headed off upstream, Kenny said he was headed to Linton Lock. Each to their own!

Tom decided to study the charts and lots of words about the Ooose. He obviously needed some assistance so I lent him some, sitting on the book to keep it warm. Very helpful I thought.

The lady from NB Gandja came to say hello, we’d been wondering where abouts of the river they’d got to. They had enjoyed their trip up to Ripon and on their way back they had moored at Boroughbridge when the river started to come up. Someone from the homemade vessel, No 9, had knocked on their roof at about midnight and suggested that they should move to the floating pontoon above Milby Lock. The following morning some C&RT staff told them not to move until the level dropped. When it did they had called Kenny at Naburn, but he told them there was no space, so they headed into York Marina as the river was due to rise again. She was hoping for a discount as they weren’t using any of the facilities, just electric and water, at £27.50 a night! Glad we’d headed to the lock! They plan on heading to Selby on Tuesday, so we may see them again down the way.

To while away some of the afternoon we tagged along at the very back of an heritage tour around the lock. These were taking place over the weekend with a volunteer talking about the history of the Ouse and Naburn Lock. We missed about a third of it, but did find out that the lock island had once been home to a corn/flint mill and workers cottages. The mill and lock were serviced by a blacksmith in one of the buildings which still stands.

The chap showed photos of the floods on Boxing Day 2012 when the lock island was under water, right up to the yale lock on the office door, quite impressive. Neither Mick or myself remember that flood, November 2000 was the highest recorded, the gate across the bottom of the lane by my dad’s house had only one bar left above the water on that occasion, I suspect in 2012 there were at least two bars visible.

Back at the boats the level was getting more and more promising. Tilly did her best to be patient, waiting for her shore leave to return. We waited for a view to come back to each side of Oleanna. Being hemmed in without a view was getting to all of us. At least you got to go outside!!

The afternoon wore on, Jo had headed out to the park with her kids and a friend, maybe we should have done the boat shuffle before she went out. Mick chatted to Kenny and Richard, both of us heading down the lock in the morning, we’d be joined by a couple of cruisers heading to Goole. We waited and waited. Was that Tiger Storm we could hear? We waited. That had to be them! I baked a loaf of bread for Mick and then got a fish crumble ready for the oven.

At half an hour past my dingding the back of Oleanna dipped. Tom went to chat with Jo She, She needed to settle the kids then could move her outside and give us some back. This all took way too long, a Tiger Tom should understand my needs and hopes, but they just slid away.

As Jo pulled back we could just see the edge of the moorings glinting in the evening sun, any earlier and we’d have been paddling. Everyone was out and ready to move round. Jo winded and headed off up the cut to wind again and return to the visitor moorings so her kids could have easy access to the bank.

Then it was our turn. Mick reversed Oleanna back to the nearest end of the moorings. A blast of reverse then an adjustment with forwards meant he flooded the moorings, luckily my end stayed dry, well drier as there was a layer of sticky silt that the ducks had been paddling about in.

Doofer moved outwards, the hybrid boat pulled back and Richard reversed NB Isabella back towards the moorings. Doofer and the hybrid moving back in, both against the pontoon. They will be following us down the lock in a few days time.

As we finished tying up, the beeper went announcing that the crumble was ready. It also meant that it was way past cat curfew. Should we risk letting Tilly out for the first time in days. Our decision was no. Should she get carried away and stay out overnight the tide would not wait for us. She would have to make do with a view tonight.

0 locks, 0.06 miles in reverse, 1 boat gone, £27.50! 5 boats shuffled round, 0 milk at the shop, 7pm land visible, 1 balloon, 1 so so bored cat, 2/3rds of a tour, 1 loaf, 1 crumble, 6 days without a view, 2 sun setting vistas revealed, 1 early night.

Saturn, 126m From Half Way. 29th August

Naburn Water Point Pontoon

I woke at 6:30, my internal clock nudging me awake at the time we could have been leaving if the levels were good. But there was no surprise as I looked out the front, the levels had gone back up again! Back to sleep it was.

Some old wires for the telephone engineers

This morning’s Geraghty Zoom included Revengeful Gutters, Ging Gang Goolie, Currier Couriers and slight envy of Marions new Fire Pit they’d be trying out tonight.

By 11 the levels at Viking Recorder seemed to be levelling out, but would they fall sufficiently for us to head off downstream tomorrow morning, which is when our original plan had been. A look at the forecast suggested not and the level would drop a bit, but then go back up again!

She tried to explain things to me. ‘It’s like your be’doingee ball Tilly. We can only tie the good dry outside up when the ball hits the floor, but at the moment it spends a lot more time in the air than on the floor. When it does hit the floor it immediately jumps back up into the air.‘ I’d be able to put my paw on it to stop it bouncing back up, they’d do the same if they really cared about me!!!

After watching, La Course, the Womens one day race of the Tour de France we had a chat with the Lockie. He confirmed that we wouldn’t be going anywhere tomorrow morning, but with fine weather for the next few days Monday is looking like it might be possible. Fingers crossed.

NB Large Marge following us downstream in 2016

Four years ago today we’d woken early and entered Naburn Lock in the mist heading back to Selby after a few days in York. We’d managed to visit the city when the levels had stayed low for a few days and as we left the river was rising again, by the end of the day the mooring bollards at Naburn were under water, today they were nowhere to be seen!

Would the shop at the campsite have our newspaper? We went to ask, but they don’t sell papers. With no shop in Naburn Village we’d have to do without a paper today.

Instead we went for a walk. The grass verge to the village is wide and mown. St Matthews church sits on the outskirts. We could smell food coming from the pub, but resisted and headed off down Vicarage Lane to find the old railway line, now Route 65 of the National Cycle Network.

In 1864 this route was opened knocking half an hour off the journey time between London and Edinburgh. It carried trains like the Flying Scotsman and the Mallard, coal and steel from Yorkshire to other parts of the country. Trains would also take workers from the villages south of York in to Rowntrees factory on the Foss Islands line. Local passenger services stopped in 1958 and the goods traffic ceased in 1964.

Only 10 miles to Selby, it feels like another world today

In the 1980’s work was underway developing the Selby coalfield which coincided with electrification of the rail line. Possible subsidence in the area might cause speed restrictions on the line, now was a good time to bypass the swing bridges at Naburn and Selby creating a new route, getting British Coal to pay for it.

Once the new route opened, the stretch from Riccall to York was sold for £1 to Sustrans and formed the first six miles of the National Cycle Network.

To mark the millennium, staff from the University of York created a 10km, 575,872,239 to 1 scale model of the solar system. Scale models of the planets are positioned along the route, The Sun being closest to Tescos in York and Pluto just outside Riccall and there are 1/3 scale models of the Cassini probe and Voyager 1.

Today we joined the route around about half way between Uranus and Jupiter. Heading towards the Ouse we soon came across a raised mound up to a turret made from signal ducting. We climbed to the top expecting a view, but trees got in the way. Below a sign suggested sitting on a bench at the base and lining your view up with a stick. This we did, and there was the view, the central tower of York Minster. Originally this could be seen from the turret, but an oak tree has grown to mask it.

By Naburn Station there is the Tuck Trike Saturn Stop. Here picnic benches offer a break to walkers and cyclists, there is a cafe, a hut with a portapottie and quite a few artworks around the site.

We then walked past Saturn on it’s plinth, a sign post pointing the way to the next planets in each direction.

Naburn Swing Bridge was our next landmark, sitting over the fast flowing Ouse.

Murals have been painted on the concrete walls, poetry added to the rounded sides of the bridge and high above everything sits The Fisher Of Dreams with bicycle and dog.

Designed by Pete Rogers the sculpture was commissioned as part of York City’s Millenium celebrations. The design involved the community, three ideas were formulated, in January 2001 a vote was taken and The Fisher of Dreams was chosen.

The sculpture depicts a person holding a fishing rod sitting on the supports of the old control tower. On the end of the fishing line is a cut out of the Flying Scotsman.

Behind the figure lies their bicycle, a dog with cocked leg taking a wee on it’s saddle. A very amusing sculpture which it was nice to get to see from a different angle.

Down below a big cruiser fought it’s was upstream against the current.

We retraced our steps and then walked down into the village. Those chips smelt good!

Late afternoon we could hear funny noises from outside. Was someone having a shower? Did someones engine have a strange rhythm? It was in fact a cruiser turned up to fill with water. They pulled in behind us and tied up to the boat on the outside, hoses passed over boat roofs. He’d run out a few days ago, so today he really needed to fill up!

That wasn’t the end of the excitement for the day. I’d just served up our lamb potato and spinach curry when there were voices and engine noises coming from the lock area. One big cruiser was in the lock facing upstream.

Ropes were being passed round the swing bridge, then another cruiser came in behind them. The tidal river was so high the height difference up onto the none tidal section could only have been about a foot. These were almost certainly the two cruisers that had left the other day. Wonder how much diesel they’d used pushing against the current to get here from Selby?

0 locks, 0 miles, 3.75 miles walked, 1,443,300,000km to Uranus, 648,860,000km to Jupiter, £1 for 6 miles, 1 swing bridge, 1 fisher, 1 engine, 1 bike, 1 dog, 3 cruisers moving, 2 boaters wondering what cat kebabs taste like.

Narrowboat Oleanna

Travels of Narrowboat Oleanna

Category Archives: Narrowboat Life

Twelve Held Up. 7th September

Patience Tilly Patience. 30th August

Saturn, 126m From Half Way. 29th August