Friday, March 24, 2017

A gongoozler's point of view

Working through Banbury lock today, I had a pleasant chat with a young lady with a Geordie accent. "There's still time to come across the top gate." I said, "I wont be opening it until the water is level". She looked incredulously into the lock as the water poured through and said, "You've got to wait until the water is level?? That'll take hours." It was only after she had gone off into the shops, that I realised that she probably thought that the paddles had to be open until the water in the pound above the lock would fall to the level of that in the lock. Well she would have been right then wouldn't she? That would take hours! I like conversations like that.

Another thing she said, looking above the lock to where Kath was holdng Herbie mid canal was "How did you get off the boat when it was in the middle of the water?" I resisted the temptation to say I jumped or swam. I just said that I had stepped off. She looked impressed.

Last night we had another go at the quiz in the Reindeer and this time we failed to win the booby prize bag of sweets for coming last, in fact we were doing really well until the inevitable music round. Perhaps I should mug upon the works of ACDC and Ed Sheeran and some other bands I can't now recall the name of.

Our short excursion this time has been lovely now that the weather has improved. The hedgerows up here are still in springtime arrears compared with down home below the M4, but lots of celandines and violets are out.

I've been noting our times between bridges and going through locks in an effort to calibrate my canalometers better, and the early results look interesting in so far as they have surprised me. How long do you think it takes to pass through a narrow lock, from stepping off the boat to getting back on? Obviously it all depends on whether the lock is set in your favour or against, and whether there are other boats about. We had a mixture of all that, but in all cases I was surprised. I'll posts some results when I've had a better look through my scribbled notes.

1 comment:

Nick said...

Please do - I will be fascinated. CanalPlan's values are very wet-finger.