Solace Day 11. All Change

A busy or should I say active day.  25 locks passed through.  Our moving down the Shroppie was nearing its end as we needed to turn and head back towards the marina.   One of the minor inconveniences of narrowboating is you can't just do a U turn as you would in a car.  The canal is rarely as wide as the length of your narrowboat.  This necessitates the use of a winding hole.

A winding hole is a widened part of the canal where you can do the boating equivalent of a 3 point turn.  If you happen to have a full length (70 foot canal were built before the metric system so I will stick with imperial ) you can't turn in all winding holes.  There are two theories as to how they got their name.  My preferred wind as in winding a clock.  Mainly because winding would be familiar to people before the canals were built.  Others prefer wind as in the stuff which causes gales.  They argue in the days of horse drawn boats the wind was used to help turn the boat.

Back to the 25 locks.  First we went up the Audlem flight of 15 locks a rise of 93 feet (28.3m) a short cruise and then up the Adderly 5 with a rise of 31 feet (9.5 m).  Immediately beyond the 5 locks there is a winding hole.  So we turned, down 5 locks and moored up for the night.

The blip shows on of those fortuitous occasions when you get a boat coming the opposite way.  This means the lock is "set" for you (either empty or full) and the gates open and you can leave your gates open.