This morning the top gates on Mexborough Low Lock wouldn’t fully open. Being a skinny ditch crawler that didn’t present a problem but we did wonder whether the large white bale behind the lock gate should be removed. Then one of the local boaters explained the “bale” had been deliberately placed in the water to absorb diesel and oil. Product recognition meant we then managed to see numerous bales during the remainder of the cruise.
There were four CRT employees and three vehicles at the next lock (Sprotbrough). They were opening and closing the top gates to the lock which gave us the impression there might have been a problem. Jan walked forward and discovered they had long poles with a hoe blade on one end and were removing the weeds from the gates.
I’m all for maintenance but couldn’t understand why it needed four men and three vehicles to complete a task that could be done by two?
We had a police escort below the lock. Jan wanted to know whether we were going to get the “blues and twos”? Apparently not!
There were police divers in the water under Doncaster Bridge which takes the busy A1(M1) motorway over the navigation. It was a training exercise.
We continued on to Doncaster where we found the 72 hour moorings full. However the CRT notice tells boaters to be prepared to breast up so we breasted up against an unoccupied narrowboat and made a quick trip into town for our pre-ordered shopping. Rather than stay breasted up we opted to continue on to the 48 hour moorings above Long Sandall Lock. This is where the small garden and BBQ tables are and we were hoping for a mooring. Fortunately we were in luck and will spend a couple of days here relaxing and doing some maintenance.
2 comments :
There is nothing absorbent about the floating white "bags". The outer casing is a large white square nylon sack. Inside is a very large number of the clear inflatable plastic bags you get in mail orders to fill the spare space in the box.
I think the sacks were used as a crash deck below people working at height to provide a soft landing if they fell. Around 100 were thrown into the canal in early summer 2013. As the firm had finished the job it saved them having to dispose of the sacks so CRT's efforts to get them to collect the sacks, or pay for CRT to collect them have been unsuccessful.
They are surprisingly buoyant and exceptionally light. We collected around 20 for CRT while we were there in July 2013 and towed them to the nearest lock.
Dammit... If we had known that we could have also recovered a couple of them!
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