Grand Union Lock 12 on the Buckby flight has been a bottleneck for about 10 days as one of the two top gate heel post had been damaged preventing the gate opening and CRT were pulling boats one at a time through the lock by hand. A repair was planned for today which would require complete closure of the lock. We understood it would be complete by midday so we set off early to secure a good place on the queue of boats awaiting the reopening.
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| CRT working on the lock gate |
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| Attaching the balance beam to replacement metal bracket |
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| Balance beam in place |
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| Rotted bits from the heel post |
We arrived at the bottom lock at 9:00am - the first boat there. CRT staff were already hard at work dismantling the top of the faulty lock gate removing the balance beam and the damaged section of heel post. It turned out that the latter had rotted badly and so the failure wasnt due to careless use. Work was not completed until about 16:30 so we decided to stay at the bottom of the flight until tomorrow morning - passage would take about 2 hours and we didnt fancy cruising til 6:30pm. Several other boats who mostly had also attended the Northampton festival also made the same decision but others, hireboats and shared ownership boats, were due to be back at base on Saturday.
The day wasnt all wasted as we took the opportunity to visit the adjacent farm shop and buy meat, veg and sauces for another 3 days meals.
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