Vandals close Wigan locks—again

BOATERS were stuck  at Wigan on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal again this week after vandals once again emptied a pound.

Becoming a regular occurrence, this time four boats were stranded in the pound above Lock 52 at Chapel Lane after vandals had  drained the pound, Alan Tilbury reveals.

It then took hours for British Waterways staff to re-fill the pound to enable the boats to proceed.

Fell out of bed

With the boats tilting, one boaters told that he actually fell out of his bed on his moored boat as the water ran out of the pound. The second time his boat had been grounded within a week, so intended moving to a 'safer' mooring.

Another boater wanting to go up the Wigan Flight to Adlington and back decided that the delay would make the trip impossible, so decided to turn back.

Demands from boaters

It is obvious that the vandals have  a windlass to open all the paddles, and there has been demands from regular boaters of the area for British Waterways to install cameras in view of the frequency of the attacks.

However, a British Waterways spokesman told us that instead it intended to padlock the paddles, admitting:

"This has happened on numerous occasions and we will now be locking the locks early evening to avoid this happening in the future."