Sunday 8th July

The Stainforth and Keadby Canal is so different from the Chesterfield – very wide and deep. It is fairly straight but at least you can see over the banks!

We went to investigate the pump noise before we set off. It seems that there is a small dyke either side of the canal and one of them had broken its bank and flooded the road and gardens. Some water was being pumped back into the dyke and some was being sucked into large tankers. At the first swing bridge we found the tankers discharging its water back into the canal.

We did 6 swing bridges in total – well 5 and 1 lifting bridge. The lifting bridge was interesting – I’ve never opened one of those before. In Thorne there is a new (2005) pedestrian swing bridge which isn’t on the map and totally threw us! According to a local dog walker it’s a very temperamental bridge and quite often breaks down. We called into the visitor moorings and walked into the town to do some shopping before getting more water. I started to listen to the Wimbledon men’s final on Radio 5 Live on the laptop and watching the score on the live results service from Wimbledon – I can never work out scores from the radio commentary.

Thorne Lock is mechanized so nice and easy. Straight after the lock there is a swing bridge which had to be opened before the boat can leave the lock. I opened the bridge and lock gates and let Mary H out then closed everything up but I couldn’t get my BW key out of the mechanism. We checked everything again and I was just refilling the lock (the bottom gates leaked like a fish) when a local said that quite often the gates don’t close properly so I needed to reopen them and try again – that worked!

The canal started to wind more after Thorne with trees on the banks – much more interesting. We stopped at Huddle Grounds Winding Hole for the night – along with Felicitas! Millie was off the boat almost as soon as we stopped which is quite unlike her and even brought us a mouse before bedtime – bless her!