No way up...

Weds 5th Sept afternoon and we are getting worrying reports from boaters and mountain bikers coming down the canal, that there is a nearly-dry section higher up which they doubt we'll get through without grounding. Dad and Em walk ahead with Haggis and myself, a few locks to take a look. Between lock 25 (Smithyholme) and 26 (Pinnel) we find the problem; a "pound" which is 2 feet down in level (brown drying canal banks) - not enough water coming in from above and either leaks or bad practise by lock users below have almost emptied it.

One of our sister-ships, the Warwick, is struggling down grinding along the bottom and churning mud with her propellor. We walk up one more lock to let a lock full down to help, and Warwick makes it, but she lets that lock full down with her (obviously).

We decide to try it. We chug up to lock 25 and open the top (head) gates but 60 yards into the pound and we hit ground. We retreat back through the lock and decide to abandon the summit. Shame, but there's plenty more canal below Sowerby Bridge to play in.

Problem. We now have a 56 foot boat pointing upstream and the canal is nomally only about 30 foot wide. The next turning round point ("winding point") is 5 locks back down, in Todmorden. These boats are beasts to steer when going backwards (steering mainly works by the propellor wash being diverted at an angle by the rudder; doesn't happen in reverse). So it is a tired gang of wranglers helping the boat back through the locks by walking the towpath beside the boat, keeping her near the path with ropes, or away with poles. It's 8pm and nearly dark by the time we finally turn round under the "Great Wall of Todmorden" and moor up to eat and sleep

By now we dogs are confident around the locks - my first view of the aft deck with the engine chugging below my feet and the deck rocking slightly was worse than the "scary bridge" at Home, but by now I'm nipping up and down the gang plank and trotting happily across the narrow walkways over the locks, or along the planking at the top of the lock gates.This confidence can occasionally lead to recklessness, and both Meg and the H have "near misses" when their front feet (or elbows and chests) are clinging to dry land, but their back legs get wet - haggis has one of those classic cartoon moments when his front end is on the bank and his back feet are on the deck, as the boat gradually drifts away from the bank. He doesn't want to jump as the deck is slippy steel, and he thinks he will be worse off. An anxious looking dog at the best of times, H's face is a picture, till Dad realises his predicament and rescues him

Em-J goes one better, slipping down the gap between boat and bank while blackberry-wrangling, so that her life jacket explodes into full inflation, her sister screams in alarm and Dad has to sprint down the side of the boat to haul her out - cold and wet, upset but not damaged.

My only proper contact with water is when I have rolled in some serious duck-poo and Dad dangles me in the lock to rinse me off. Meanie!

Downstream tomorrow

Deefer

ps - Oh the pics! 2 of me sprinting round the edges of locks, one of the horridly dark and curvaceous Falling Royd Tunnel, near Mytholmroyd