Just out of interest, how deep is the canal?
Asked Fee in the previous post: not very, is the answer, when Joe took his dip he could touch the bottom, but said (having lost his Crocs) ‘It was gross, mud, hundreds of years old mud, I wasn’t putting my feet in that!’
We weren’t overly concerned about the boys (or Spud) falling in (I’m the least competent swimmer in the family) except for the risk of them getting crushed between boat and bank and the inherent danger around the locks, with lock gates, paddles and strong currents to worry about, along with being aware of the small, but very real risk of Weil’s disease the quote below is from last weeks press.
Weil’s disease, believed to have caused the death this week of Olympic gold medal-winning rower Andy Holmes, is the acute human form of a bacterial infection with a raft of different names: mud fever, swamp fever, haemorrhagic jaundice, swineherd’s disease, sewerman’s flu. All are known as Leptospirosis, mild cases of which affect millions of people every year worldwide.
There are some beautiful bridges on the Leeds-Liverpool canal, the white bar on the painted arch is where you should aim your boat, it indicates the deepest point of the canal, not necessarily the centre; many of the bridges are on bends in the canal, it’s important to get the line of approach right.
Bridge 161 the double arch bridge at East Marton is an especially elegant solution to an engineering problem.
It looks like the original bridge wasn’t high enough, when the road was improved, so they built another arch on top and more recently it has been widened further.
October 27, 2010 at 9:32 pm
I don’t blame Joe one little bit! Thanks for the reply, Mrs UHDD.
My daughter’s friend was a bit luckier – the canal she landed in had been cleaned out at the millenium so there was only a couple of years’ worth of swan poop!
October 28, 2010 at 2:23 am
I love how they mark the bridges! Makes them visible at night too, I would imagine. And taking a bicycle along for exploring on land seems very sensible. Were you able to get any pix of the inside of the boat?
I’m surprised some enterprising sort hasn’t come up with a scheme to dredge up the mud off the canal bottom and sell it for fertilizer — what with all the swan poop, etc., in it, it would probably be good stuff.
October 28, 2010 at 11:59 am
You can tell what a wet summer we had – all the trees still have green leaves on them. In fact, there’s barely any sign of autumn at all. That’s quite unusual for this time of year. In a week it will be Bonfire Night, and usually all the leaves are down by then (well, they used to be in the old days).
October 29, 2010 at 4:24 am
Great photos!
October 29, 2010 at 7:12 pm
Another fascinating post with terrific pictures! xx
December 7, 2012 at 7:25 pm
I used that excuse when I was late for school once ‘fell in cut’ was how explained in on the late book. The ‘cut’ is the canal in Yorkshire. I later worked as a cleaner on the narrow boats in Skipton and recognise many of the location you have so beautifully photographed; thank you for a trip down memory lane, or should that be canal