Fleckney

I HATE driving the boat through wide locks but after working up 9 hard locks we swapped over after lunch. Typically, whereas most of the locks I’d worked were full when we got there so needed emptying and the gates were really hard to open and then hard to close because they kept swinging, the first one Roger got to work was empty and easy. When we got to Pywell’s Lock the pound above it was very high and water was pouring over the top gates. There were 2 boats coming out of the lock above and a wall of water came down the pound and rushed over the gates by about 3 inches. It was very scary and the lock was filling without the paddles being opened.

Kibworth Top Lock is very old. The date stone says 1895 an the date on the back of the lock paddles says 1894.

There haven’t been many good mooring places along this stretch of the canal and we’d planned on mooring just before Bridge 73 at Fleckney but when we arrived there wasn’t enough room for us so we had to reverse back about ½ mile until we found somewhere suitable.