When we started this morning we were three locks off the top of the route - the top pound of about 3 miles of flat water which included a short tunnel before we started the journey down towards the Thames level again. But before we get into that, I should tell you about the visit we paid to the church at Wootton Rivers and it's clockmaker, Jack Spratt. He was a well known maker of clocks and all sorts of contraptions and was born in Wootton Rivers and when he retired asked the villages for bits of scrap metal out of which he made the clock to celebrate the coronation of George V in 1911. It was relatively recently restored and put back into the church and was just visible in the gloom.
The first three locks are fairly close together, but don't really help you get in a rhythm for doing them. After you get to the top, there is a distance of less than a mile until you come to a short tunnel - 500 yards. Unlike most tunnels we have been through, this one still has the chains that were strung along many tunnels for boaters to hold on to and pull themselves through the tunnel when there was no longer a horse to do that. We also discovered that this tunnel was built because the local landlord didn't want to see boaters as they travelled his land. The railway passes over the top of this tunnel moving from one side of the canal to the other.
I do like the arched effect you get of the view from the tunnel entrance and exit, so here you are, even though you've seen pictures like this before in this blog!
I had done the first three locks of the morning and after the tunnel there was a fairly short distance before we started the Crofton flight down to the valley below. This is the last real flight of locks - most of the locks on the rest of the route are every mile or half mile or so. So after I had done the first two locks of the flight, Chris and I switched so that he did the locks and I drove. Several of the locks are near bridges, but not all of them. We had to leave the locks empty of water which is easy as the boat is going down anyway, but sometimes it meant that both of the lock gates at the bottom were open, blown that way sometimes. To get to the further side you had to climb over the top lock gates which were high and accessed using a sort of stirrup which was tricky to get your foot into. I was glad Chris was doing these.
Our plan was to moor at the bottom by the pumping station for overnight as we had done on the way up. As we approached the bottom it looked as though there might be somewhere to moor, but in fact it was too small. To our immense good fortune, a wide-beam boat set off as we approached, so we were readily able to fill in his slot. We moored quickly and went up to the steam pumping station, which as you can see from the smoke coming out of the chimney, was indeed working.
If you are not interested in steam pumping stations feel free to look away now!! The visit was really good, with lovely guides. One of them was a lovely lady who was a Business Manager for a school in her day job, but regularly came to work at the museum and was in fact capable of driving the engine. We had a good conversation about engineering role models, and the difficulty she sometimes had engaging men in conversation - they didn't expect her to know much. Great for the girl visitors I say! Driving the engine is no mean task. It's on three levels which requires radio contact between the people manning it. The steam boiler is on the ground floor.
I do like it when they paint engines red! Much more fun!
This is the middle floor - the cylinder head room - and you are looking at the valves and pistons which go from the driving floor below (we'll come back to that) and the beam above.
And this is the top floor with the beam of the engine. They have two of these in fact, one dating from 1812 and one from 1846. Both are working, and they have a system where they swap their use over every 30 minutes so you can see and they can explain the process of priming the engine to get it working. From the beam room, with the beam at the bottom of the picture, you could see down to the canal and our boat below.
From there we went down to the driving floor where the main controls of the engine are.
They are beautifully engineered, and operate very quietly, in fact the main noise you can hear is the water sloshing through the system after it's been pumped up from down below.
The older engine has a vertical pump mechanism and you can see the water in the circular chamber below.
The other engine pushes it to the side and you can see it here going out into the leat which is the channel that takes the water to the top level of the canal so that it is there for boats to take it down through the locks with them.
When you are outside the building a swish of water comes out every time the beam engine moves one way or the other and it then pulses along the leat.
Now this is what I call a tool wrack - handy human provided for scale.
I love the shape of this chimney. It's had it's top re-pointed this year done by a man on a cherry picker!!
The guide we were talking to explained that the prevailing wind was always from the west and wore away the mortar too easily. They had won a lottery grant to have repairs done to the building this year so there was scaffolding up on the main building whilst the work was done.
There was great enthusiasm from the whole team and keenness to answer any questions. I think it's so important that these things are kept going as they are history that everyone can relate to and when manned by enthusiastic people you can see how the youngsters there were getting a lot out of their visits.
We got back to the boat and read for a while. The wind really got up and was really gusty as you can see from the waves on the canal! It certainly came from the expected direction! No seasickness I'm pleased to report.
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