Lancaster

Today's Canal - Lancaster

We were still moored adjacent to the services in Carnforth so one of the first tasks of the day was the usual round pe elsan, water and rubbish. That complete we took as many bags as we could muster, including a rucksack, to go to the nearby Tesco for a full re-stock.

Once we had carried it all back to the boat and stowed it all away, it was after 11:30 before we set off. We said farewell to Carnforth which has proved to be very useful to us as a base for various off-boat trips.

The forecast for today had been uniformly grey, neither sunshine nor rain. Wrong! As we left, the rest of the morning was largely sunny as this photo shows. Of course, as we are now returning along the route we came up, most of the best photos have already been included so we may struggle to show you further points of interest - but we will try!

There were several sharp bends today, sometimes with a bridge hole to negotiate at the same time, as here. With the water level well down and a canal that has always had shallow edges, there is often only a narrow channel to be found for slightly deeper boats. This becomes more acute on these bends where longer boats have to be very careful to keep both ends in water of sufficient depth. On a couple of occasions we had to do a  bit of a reverse turn to get through. A little later we came to a stretch with a bend, a large amount of reed grown on the offside and boats moored on the towpath! This time we did have to make a very rare use of our boat pole to push the stern into the least shallow water.

We showed a picture of Hatlex Swing Bridge in an earlier blog but at that time we did not work out why it would have been constructed, as it only leads to one property amongst a larger estate. We have now found a old map that shows a single cottage here - other houses came along much later. In that context an accommodation was quite normal.

We paused for lunch at the visitor mooring in Hest Bank. When we set off again there were some ominous grey clouds in the distance and, out to sea, a heavy downpour was taking place. However, we continued dry for quite some time.

As we crossed the Lune Aqueduct we could see that one of the showers was passing to the north of us but positioned so that a clear rainbow could be seen over the river.

As we neared the centre of Lancaster, the dampness in the air turned to gentle rain but enough to don waterproofs. An even stronger rainbow appeared to accompany the next shower. 

We made a slightly better attempt at capturing a picture of the slender spire on the Catholic Cathedral.

Gradually the rain increased and, of course, as we came alongside the visitor mooring in the centre of Lancaster, it poured down. We hastily tied up, leaving the rest of the mooring up procedure until a drier spell!

8.1 Miles - 0 Locks