Back on the boat we had lunch, then set off just as the rain started. It didn't amount to much and soon stopped. We carried on downstream, encountering one lock in particular - North Lock 42 - whose bottom gates were almost impossible to open, such was the amount of water leaking from the top gates. Fortunately a boat was waiting to come up the lock so, with three of us heaving on the balance beam, it succumbed.
I saw two things today I had never seen before. One was this swan carrying a couple of cygnets on its back.
Once we had cleared Leicester much of the journey was through watermeadows.
The other sight not seen before - and I probably never will again - was of a fish caught between the leaky bottom gates of Sileby Lock. Jubilee was in the lock and I had raised the bottom paddles to empty the lock.
As the water drained from the lock the pressure holding the gates together reduced. The gap widened slightly and the fish fell back into the water and disappeared.
It can have been stuck like that for only 30 seconds or so, just long enough for me to take these two photos. Would it have survived? Have you ever seen anything like that?
We tied up for the night just below the lock and walked round Sileby after tea. Is it a town or a village? The cricket club thinks it's a town; Nicholson calls it a village.
1 comment:
swans often carry their young that way - and their young still try to climb up when they are much too big, like human children expecting to be carried when they have grown too much.
Grebes also carry their young that way.
Post a Comment