No more swing bridges now as we headed south. On the way to Foulridge Tunnel we passed from Yorkshire to Lancaster and now it’s Red Roses all the way. The entrance to the tunnel is controlled by traffic lights and as they were set to red we tied up to wait. Duggie jumped ashore, and almost immediately the lights changed to green and on checking my watch it was dead on eleven o’clock. We headed off, second in a queue of four boats and suddenly realised Duggie was still ashore, some rapid reversing and Brian jumped off, scooped up the pooch and jumped back on and we resumed our place in the line-up. The dry weather ensured that the tunnel only dripped on us and after twenty minutes or so we emerged back into the sunshine.
A mile later the first of the seven Barrowford Locks appeared. I had been looking forward to treating everyone to an ice cream at Top Lock Ice Creams, but sadly they have closed after three years trading, it appears that BW had wanted to increase the rent to twenty thousand pound a year, obviously not tenable.
Now we were descending and the views were splendid, but worryingly the level of the water in the reservoir alongside the locks seemed much lower than we would have expected at this time of year. We passed under the M65 and a local road and the last two locks where we decided that there was a good mooring spot on the right. After a very late lunch we walked into Barrowford, but had left it too late to visit The Heritage Centre, instead we had a drink at the very old White Bear Inn, before returning to SKYY for Brian and Anne to start packing as sadly they would be leaving us tomorrow
No comments:
Post a Comment