Stoppages coming thick and fast

Published: Wednesday, 07 July 2010

IN ADDITION to the stoppages on Caen Hill and the Birmingham & Fazeley, more are coming thick and fast—lack of maintenance a primary cause.

As well as the Caen Hill stoppage on the Kennet & Avon, Bath Flight will be closed all next week to allow repairs to Lock 12 and repairs to brickwork quoins to Lock 10, Iain Powell tells us.

Whilst this is being undertaken the pump in the pumping station will also be replaced.

It is on the Bath Flight where money is being spent on producing and erecting sculptures—not of a great deal of use for the waterway.

On the bottom

Even the  river-fed Trent & Mersey Canal is exceptionally short of water, with BW men at the broad locks from Stenson to Shardlow managing the water, with boats at Shardlow on the bottom.

The navigation was closed for a while, but the work of the BW men kept most of the boats moving, though its future is unknown.

Boaters heading up through Derwent Mouth Lock off the Trent are struggling up to the village then turning back, as in fact we did together with Pied Piper having great difficulty turning due to the lack of depth.  A broad beam too struggled to Shardlow but managed to turn in the boatyard.

Of course the Trent & Mersey water shortage problem is caused by the drastically leaking Derwent Mouth top gates, with one having dropped even further in the past two weeks, allowing a great deal of leakage from the short pound.  Though the notice asks boaters to keep the bottom gates closed, they are so badly balanced that many just cannot move one in particular, so it is left open, as it was when we arrived, with water freely running away and the canal above down over 12 inches.

This has been in this condition since last year, but of course there has been no maintenance except the sticking of a notice on the gate beam.

Birmingham & Fazeley

The latest on the Birmingham & Fazeley stoppage is that due to limited water  resources re-filling the canal is taking longer than expected, and though officially opened on Tuesday, British Waterways advise deep drafted craft to avoid the canal until Friday 9th July.

Rochdale Canal closed

Tuel Hill Lock at Sowerby Bridge, from allowing limiting passages, is now completely closed, Mike Fretwell writes:

We managed to get Savile, the Calder Navigation Society Trip Boat, up to Sowerby Bridge yesterday to find that Tuel Lock  was closed due to water shortage. We were attempting to take Savile to the Rochdale Canal Festival which runs from the 24th July to August 1st.

BW representatives in Sowerby Bridge also told us that the Environment Agency had stopped them pumping water into the canal at Luddenden due to low water in the river. That also makes a mockery of the article below from the boaters point of view:

The Waterways Trust, Pennines Prospects and Upper Calder Valley Renaissance want more people living in the Upper Calder Valley area to make use of the Rochdale Canal—its towpaths and green areas.