 |
| Arriving at our first boat lock |
I was somewhat familiar with boat locks because my sister had me watch a show called "Distant Shores." If you don't know, a boat lock is an engineered device, enabling boats to easily go uphill or downhill. You navigate your boat into the lock, then close the door behind the boat (the front door would already be closed). You then either raise or lower the water level within the lock, before opening the front door and navigating out of the lock, higher or lower than you once were.
 |
| Me, on the boat, in a boat lock (Photo Credit: Ihde Family) |
As you can see in the photo above, I am in the boat, inside a lock, and the water level has been lowered. In the picture below, you can see the front of the lock is now open, and the boat I am on is ready to go on its merry way.
 |
| Michael, photographing the boat in the boat lock |
The locks date back many years. The canal system in England was actually man-made, enabling floating barges (with heavy contents, like coal and lumber) to carry materials throughout the kingdom. Horses tethered to the barge would walk canal-side, pulling the floating barge and it's contents along.
 |
| Lock doors opening |
The doors to the locks are still manually opened and closed. As you can see, the kids (and parents) got a kick out of helping. And the canal-side pub to the right quenched everyone's thirst after all the hard work!
 |
| Manual labor |
Little Alison, not quite three years old, was not about to let everyone else push without her help. Even after the door was closed, she kept "helping!"
 |
| Wee Alice wanted to help, too! |
This particular lock was a double-wide!
 |
| Double-wide boat lock |
Not only did you have to push the doors open and closed, but each boat had a crank that fit the locks. You used this crank once you were securely in the lock in order to raise or lower the water.
 |
| Bill cranking the water into (or out of) the boat lock |
 |
| Waiting for the water to rise (or fall… can't remember!) |
We learned a lot the first day. For example, we tried to moor in a location where mooring was prohibited. There weren't any signs, but one of the other canal-goers crankily told us "ya can't stop there, ya' know!" Thankfully, as soon as we opened our mouths and the American accent spilled out, they were much less cranky and explained the rules to the obviously ignorant newbies.
 |
| Moored at our first canal-side pub |
A local townie kid made friends with Bill and kept asking him lots of science/engineer type questions. The kid would leave for a while, but kept coming back throughout our diner, so we nicknamed him The Boomerang.
 |
| Bill made a friend in "boomerang kid" (Photo Credit: Idhe Family) |
The canal water was pretty disgusting and all of us feared it. Thankfully, even though arms, a leg, and even an ear or two went into the water, no one got dysentery, tetanus, or leeches.
 |
| How the legendary poo pot got its name |
At the end of each night we found a quiet spot where we could (legally) moor for the night, the game boards came out, and more fun was had.
 |
| View from our first night's mooring |
No comments:
Post a Comment