Testing Stret

Pics
I was out fairly early today: Shopping at 8:30 - back home and then out to see the convoy of boats up from the Gathering of Historic Boats at Retford travelling (hopefully) to the tunnel.

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ERRORS AND OMISSIONS !
Names having never been my strong point,
and
the various crews referring to each other's boats by their owner's names,
and
me being just
rubbish,
I cocked it up.
Turns out it wasn't Aquarius that made it through Stret but Bath.
Hence the crossings out below.
If I'd just checked my piccies I'd have seen that!

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Five boats were coming through Worksop Town Lock as I got there, this put a spike in my intended visit to Birds for a sarny. There were loads of crew and passengers: I never worked out who was with what boat.

Up at Morse I watched them through: Chertsey was first and failed she had to back down to the wind.

The rest got through safely and on to Stret.

Nb Bath Aquarius couldn't manage Stret, Petrel had to take two goes and only got through with the aid of multiple flushes and bodies on a rope (mine included)

Aegis, Petrel and Aquarius Bath all made it through. They had no problems through Haggonfields or Doefield Dun but, just as Aquarius Bath was in Doefield Dun, A passing motorist pulled over to tell us that a tree had fallen across the canal a short distance up.

The offending object was just before Shireoaks Miner's Welfare, Where Archimedes and "James" are moored.

Although not the biggest of trees, it completely blocked the canal. The guy on Archimedes said it had only been down 25 minutes - good job it hadn't come down on a boat - he had already phoned BW.

 

All three boats "parked up" above Doefield Dun for lunch.
I took over 450 pictures: they're all on Flick here.

Meanwhile a call was received from Nb Bath Aquarius that they were jammed in Morse Lock on their way down. Two bikes and a Tirfor went down to rescue them.

By the time I walked back to Morse, Bath Aquarius had been freed and was long gone.

Nb Phoenix was just leaving Morse - the captain^{(pilot? driver? helmsman?)}, Mick, was intending to return to his base at Shireoaks Marina. He was understandably a little put out when I told him about the tree and he made plans to moor above Deep Lock.

 

Passing Worksop wind was Dreamcatcher, also heading for the Marina, also disappointed!

Sunday: an idle day

No change there.

New(ish) "questions and facts" page on t'other blog. Now gonna start with pics for top pound there and then carry on to the tunnel.

I think I might use this blog for blogging and scraop the blog element of t'other & just use it for … whatever comes to mind. Thinking …
I'll put yesterday at Retford here sometime, but tomorrow (Monday) we're promised that a load of boats from Retford are coming up to run through Stret & on to the Tunnel so that's washed out as far as computer's concerned.

Saturday 10th September

Just been to Retford: "Gathering of Historic Boats" in Town Lock pound.

I've got 426 photos to sort & play with so I might be a little while.

Uploaded to Flickr: just tagged 'em all Retford, Chesterfield canal, Town lock and whacked 'em into a new set "Gathering of historic boats Sep 11

Should anyone want a large (3872 x 2592) copy, just let me know.
They are all: copyright © 2011 Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Creative Commons
This means that you are free to use them for non commercial display as long as you don't alter them and you must say that they came from me.

Wed

Chat:

Note to self: if a cat is on top of the fridge, don't shut the door without checking its tail is out of harm's way. I've just had a black beast bouncing round the kitchen and out of the window at speed.

Got as far as Thorpe top lock on t'other blog. Believe it or not it's hard work. I used to get paid a decent amount for doing this stuff. Blogging's harder than walking.
I've also started a page about the canal.
Maybe I ought to finish one thing before starting another!

Strange how things go: I'm about to take a break by washing the pots!.

Only been to town today - Heron on the pond; grebe count at five (two pairs and one youngster), swan count gone up to three. A plastic was just leaving Morse on its way down. Pics to upload later.

Update

I'm slowly putting the walk from Worksop to Norwood tunnel on the other site: I will add more pictures from previous walks once I've got to the end. Formatting the pages is a bit of a pain. What I've decided to do is put small pics on the main page (see here for example) and give links to bigger views of individual features on sub-pages like this.
Google maps for the overview's quite good.
So far I've got to Milestone lock — plodding on!

I've so many pictures archived that it's gonna take some time to dig 'em out and post 'em all. I'll get round to it.

The Wordpress format is better (IMHO) than Blogger as you can have static pages. Is fun learning!

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Found this about Aqueducts on t'web yesterday: interesting specially in view of this blog post from "canalartist". (incidentally, why is it spelled aqueduct rather than aquaduct?)


Something to play with if you're a bookaholic like me. It's quite good: tried it with one or two of my favourite authors and it brought up some I'll have to try.

Other blog

Current contents:

• Anstone Stones Wood: first bit
• Worksop to Kiveton Park:
  • first bit - Morse Lock to Deep Lock
  • second bit - Deep Lock to Shireoaks
  • third bit: to Turnerwood
• What made me the man I am today (or Who's to blame): first bit
• The Grand Commercial Canal stuff

SEPTEMBER!

First things first: The bloody computer went down again! 486 pics downloaded from Thursday's walk. Fortunately I'd still got 'em on the camera card. Back on the laptop!

Thursday

Walked to the tunnel entrance and back. According to Google maps, it's 5.65 miles just to Kiveton park. With the extra (about ½mile) to the tunnel entrance, I reckon the return trip's about 12 - 13 miles.

Boats

Nb Archimedes and Nb James were moored at Shireoaks Miner's Welfare as always.

In Shireoaks Marina Little Lucy was preparing to sail.

Passed Thomas Harold …

… and Lazy Dreams locking through Turnerwood flight,

and, at Thorpe Top, a "plastic" Studland Warrior

.

Nb Wilderness was moored at its usual place

and Umnyama at Albert's dock.

Having a thorough clean out at the summit mooring was Nb Cheddington: vacuum cleaners rule!

Returning:
In addition to Umnyama, Wilderness, Thomas Harold and Lazy Dreams; a new (to me) narrowboat

Changing Pace

Rather unusually, they were a young couple who were fitting out a shell on Shireoaks Marina.

Little Lucy was out and, having turned at Turnerwood basin, was descending to moor at Stone lock.

Wildlife

A wasps' nest that someone had broken open, …

… a dead owl …

… thoughtfully(?) placed on a lock gate

and a dead moorhen on the towpath.

On the more pleasant side:

A brood (gaggle? flock? herd?) of mallard chicks.

The top pound water looks grey and uninviting but there are some really big fish in there.

Kingfisher

At the very end, near the tunnel, a brilliant flash of blue. I'd got the wrong lens on to capture it well but:

It's right in the centre of this pic so …

… zoomed, enhanced, cropped

and again …

… doctored.

Until you've seen one in flight, you just can't imagine the brilliance of the plumage.

Trip

I'd set out to take a full day so, in addition to the camera, I'd packed spare lenses, waterproof, sarny (Bird's Corned beef salad), flask of coffee and two plastic bottles of Robinson's orange juice. Unfortunately I'm not as young as I was, so by the time I got home, I was fit for nothing: flaked out straight away (after feeding hungry cats!). Thinking back, I once did 40 miles in 24 hours (Lyke Wake walk) - it'd kill me now.

I'm going to put some pics on t'other blog soonish. And then it's tagging and uploading to Flickr. This blogging & stuff takes longer than the walking! More uploaded.