Newbold

Today's Canal : Oxford

Today was universally a grey, overcast day with little wind but a tad chillier than yesterday.

We set off in good time as we had a date with the boatyard just above the bottom Hillmorton Lock. For several days we have had problems with the oven, with the flame going out in the middle of cooking. We had a particularly hard time with the roast on Sunday. Also, on a number of occasions, once gone out it would then resist being re-lit. When we were coming up the locks last week we spotted a sign listing the services of the boatyard and Christine rang to see if they could take a look at it - yes they could and she arranged to call today.

But first we had two locks to descend. Although the notice at the top lock suggested that there would be three volunteers to assist to day, there was no sign of them here! As these are the busiest on the network, the mechanisms and gates work very smoothly.

We were instructed to turn into the short arm after the middle lock which leads to the boatyard and to hover under the bridge at the entrance. We immediately could see that this a much more imposing facility than we had imagined, almost non of it visible from the main canal. This was one of the main workshops of the Oxford Canal Company. It continues to build new boats, maintain the Willow Wren fleet of hire boats that operates out of Rugby Wharf and to provide maintenance and breakdown services to today's private boat owners.

The arm is short and very crowded. Towards the end a dry docks is accessed by a tight turn.

Two boats were in for work on them and also a third in the covered dock at the far end of the open dock was having a complete re-paint. There was a pumping engine installed here quite early in the life of the canal to ensure that water from above the flight that was used when boats passed through the locks was saved and returned back to the top, We believe that pump was housed in the building to the left of the docks but, surprisingly, the information about this significant site available on the internet seems scant. 

When the duplicate locks were later installed to cope with the volume of traffic, they were designed to act as mutual side ponds, with half of a lockful being saved of possible. At one time each lock could be filled in 29 seconds.

An engineer duly came to look at the over and, of course, it totally failed to demonstrate the problems we had been having and worked perfectly every time! Hopefully that will continue when we come to cook tonight's meal.

After leaving the boatyard we backed out to enter the final lock. All three volunteers were here so we dropped down very quickly and - for us - effortlessly in only a little more than the 29 seconds.

The next pound is level through to Hawkesbury. Continued northwards and passed Clifton Cruisers - an ornate footbridge at the nearby bridge offers pedestrians a safer crossing as the road is often rather busy.

The hire fleet were all out bar one - quite different from the crowded scene when came came the other way.

Lots of different wild flowers are starting to come out - we think these were king cups.

We arrived at the visitor moorings with good rings to tie to, just before the short Newbold Tunnel. As it was now lunch time and several of the preceding moorings were full, we opted to stop here rather than go any further and risk being stuck for mooring.

After lunch we reviewed our schedule and decided that we did not need to move any further so we awarded ourselves a reading afternoon! (And time to write the blog a bour earlier than usual)

4.3 Miles - 3 Locks