Today's Canal : Northampton Arm (Grand Union)
Today was set to be our most challenging on the trip plan. The arm has 17 locks, no mooring options until just before the bottom lock onto the river and lots of reeds beside the long pounds!
With much warmer weather predicted for the later part of the day we agreed yesterday to make an early start and were off just after 7.30. As this view of the entrance to Gayton Marina shows, the day started very overcast. It felt as if we were going to have a comfortable climate for doing these locks.
Just before 8 we were at the top of the flight and starting down. The top lock was full (in this case, beginner's luck) but we could see that the first short pound was not nearly full.
At its busiest, the canal had three full time lock keepers each with their own cottage. The one at the top, now in private ownership, is the only one remaining. (Emergency call outs were just a knock at the door - mobile phones not yet invented!)
The flight has a set of mosaics, each depicting a letter from the title THE NORTHAMPTON ARM, conveniently 17 letters! We have seen them before - the last time in 2018 and they have lasted well.
Lock 3 started OK but once empty our boat just caught on the bottom cill - a slight flush of water freed it. Again, with Christine steering, was a little on the bottom whilst half way to Lock 3 but the same solution cured the problem, We did not have to take much water out of the lock.
Mike filled the next lock so that Christine could drive straight in but no, stuck on the cill with about one third of the boat in the lock. A call to CaRT was put in place - a bit early for their proper response so it took some effort to get our needs passed to the right place.
We then noticed that the level in the lock was dropping fast (unusually leaky bottom gates) Time to get the boat to safety before it became a crisis. This entailed bringing more water down but did not prove difficult. We closed up the top gate and tied the boat to a bollard but it was not really sensible to try to get either on or off the boat at this time.
By the time someone attended from CaRT (they had been running water down from the summit meanwhile as they walked down) the lock was almost empty! Glad we were not still sitting on the cill.
This, by now, was the state in the pound above - we are not sure how it ran so low, not whilst we were taking water from it.
It did not take CaRT to adjust the levels sufficiently for us to continue - but time enough to have a friendly chat! It seems that these two pounds are regular culprits. We were delayed just over an hour and a half.
As we started off again, a chap arrived offering to help and, as he seemed to know what he was doing, we readily accepted. A good move as his assistance meant that we really flew down the next ten locks!
The arm once had four impressive lift bridges - only foot traffic - but now just one is intact and not actually in use.
The second one was already in pieces 8 years ago, supposedly awaiting repair but that never happened and those parts now form a decoration along side the canal!
Lock 12 is all but under the M1 with a huge arched culvert creating an eerie space. 1950's architecture at its best (?) but it has at least survived well and today carries far more vehicles than when it was first opened in 1959 - no central barriers, no hard shoulder, no speed limit and almost no traffic! The first user travelled at almost an average of 100 mph.
Our volunteer lock keeper stayed with us until Lock 13, the last of the closely spaced flight. He then needed to return home and our grateful thanks went with him.
Although we had now completed 13 of the 17 locks, we were barely a quarter of the way along. As well as much longer pounds, the character was very different - it was not like this in 2010 when we first travelled this arm but had become so in 2018. Whilst the water is very clear and seems to have reasonable depth in the centre, the extensive reed beds restrict boats to a very slow speed. The gap between either side is often not much more than a boat width and so the water that the prop needs to pull past the boat is constrained. We mostly made little over 1 mph sometimes much less.
The construction of this modern footbridge cleared one side but not the other and the commonest situation is in the background.
We grounded gently on a couple of occasions which were easy to rectify, but at one point we almost thought we were going to be stranded well away from either bank. A large tree blocked half of the canal and Mike had to forward and reverse several times before he could find a way through (much of him in the tree's leaves! But we got through - eventually!
We now could see the prominent former Express Lifts testing tower. In 1997 the company was taken over by Otis in the US who transferred all the development and testing back 'home'. For a while the tower was unused but is now in private hands as the National Lift Tower and testing work has resumed. Permission has also been granted for it to be used for abseiling events up to 24 times a year. (Not by Mike! Christine has done fund raising by abseiling a rock face in Cornwall) The tower does not actually lean Pisa-fashion - that was cameraperson inattention!
We did not intend to go out on the River Nene today so Lock 16 was the last for now. The industrialised past of this part of the town was becoming increasingly obvious.
There were once three rail routes south of Northampton. As well as the remaining now electrified track and station there were lines off to Bedford and Peterborough which used a station close to Lock 16. There was also an extensive set of tracks serving the brewery and other industries. There is little sign of most of this history. The above photo shows one abutment of a former rail bridge.
This bridge remains but no track has run overhead in a long while.
4.3 Miles - 16 Locks
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