Seyella's Journey

It struck me last night that we’ve not put any diesel in the tank for a while, in fact not since 4th January! We usually do about 1Lt/hr for the engine and the heating, and adding the hour meters together we should have used about 155 litres. The tank holds about 165, so it was a good job we only had to reverse 200 yards to get on the pump at Anglo-Welsh. We’ve done well though, because we filled up at 133 litres, so that’s 0.86 Lt/hr.

Anyway, fully fuelled we set off towards Lowsonford. I’d spoken to a local coal merchant last week, and he rang this morning to say he could deliver tomorrow. So we arranged to meet him at the water point in the village in the morning. Knowing this was happening, I’ve also arranged a Tesco delivery to the same place. So we’ll have full tanks, full coal bunkers and full cupboards, all in 2 days!

The rendezvous is on this side of the village, just before lock 31, and strictly speaking there’s no mooring there apart from for taking on water. But as the canal is so quiet, I can’t see it being a problem. So we decided to stop just after Lock 33, leaving us just ¾ mile and 1 lock to clear by 10:00 tomorrow.

It’s been another grand day, warm and sunny. But last night was the coldest for a few days, with thin ice in places on the canal.

The bridges on this canal are I think unique. Normally, the navigation and towpath pass under the arch, but here the builders decided to send the path over the shoulder of the bridge, allowing the bridge span to be a lot narrower, in fact just wide enough for the boat.

This is fine now, but in the days of horse drawn commercial boats, had an obvious flaw in that the tow rope went over the bridge while the boat went under. So, to save the boatmen having to unhitch the rope at every bridge, the solution was to cantilever 2 short cast iron bridge decks out from the abutments, leaving a 1” gap in between for the rope to pass through. Neat, eh? The simplest ideas are often the best.

We met a swan who decided we were invading his territory and attempted to take a lump out of Megs’ nose! Here they discussing a compromise.





And Mags said there’s not enough photos of me on the blog, so she took this one looking up my nose….


Locks 6, miles 3.