1st and 2nd August
- jockhamilton01
- Aug 3
- 6 min read
I went for a walk around lunch time in the park opposite the toon, up the 70m mountain. I took the precaution of taking the pamphlet with me which had a map of the various walks on it and, so, managed to find the 9 Km walk which was fine, taking me on a circuit out around a couple of view points and a hill fort. The hill fort was about half way around and having found the turn off to it I followed the markers. It seems to be a pile of stones on the hill. I’ve not googled it but suspect I’d need a historian to make it more interesting than a pile of stones, there was no apparent order to the stones however I’m sure an archaeologist would have found them interesting. About half way back from the hill fort I had a text to say Ailsa and Jean were on the bus and so, once on the boat I pottered about a little with some cleaning and last minute shopping.
About ten minutes before they arrived Ailsa texted to say that it looked like they were on time so I went down to the bus station to meet them. The bus was due in at about 1825. At 1828 a likely looking bus came in and someone got off and someone got on but not Ailsa and Jean, it had blacked out windows so I couldn’t see in although did try peering. The driver who had been about to drive off opened the door again and asked if I wanted to get on, I explained I was waiting for friends, had he come from the airport? I didn’t understand the answer but he drove off anyway. A few minutes later another bus arrived and Jean and Ailsa got off so I stopped worrying that they’d driven on to Timbuctu.
Having hulloed and so on we walked back to the boat and dropped off the luggage before going for a quick walk around the town. By now the Church that I’d visited the previous day was locked, which reminds me the inside was painted, a bit like the Danish ones but it had 3 good organs, one of which was being played, well, which was great, in fact it had disturbed me a little as it was the wedding march being played when I opened the door and I had wondered whether I may have been interrupting a service but it was just the organist practising. She had been playing what I assumed was the main organ a new looking thing opposite the choir stalls, as I wandered around the church there was a mini organ on the opposite side, also quite new and then I saw up in the balcony another, older bigger organ up there which also looked like it may have worked. All proper pipe organs, not synthesisers, not sure why they needed three but very glad to see old technology being loved, used and appreciated.
Anyway having seen the highlights of the town and looked around the community herb garden, more herbacious than herb, we retired to the boat, had a couple of G and Ts and some lasagne before going to bed fairly early as they had been up since the lark and it was my bedtime anyway being about ten.
In the morning, I went to collect some cinammon buns for breakfast from the bakery, having carefully noted it’s opening time of 0730. It turned out that on Saturday it opened at 0800 so I returned then and we had breakfast shortly afterwards with me putting the bike aboard along with the boarding ladder and shore power to let go, to be first in the queue, for 0825 when we reversed out into the canal and slowly made our way to the bridge. By 0857 there was no one else in the queue but with the bridge opening another boat arrived, a Polish one on charter and scuttled through before the bridge had closed. At the first lock Ailsa jumped ashore with the lines and we went in, the lock keeper wanted both boats in so we went all the way forward port side to and the Polish boat, after some mishaps secured starboard side to astern of us. The lock keeper was gentle with the sluices and soon we were exiting the first lock. After a few more locks and bridges an alloy boat caught us up at a double lock but still a lock behind us so it was obvious that going solo in the locks was a little quicker. It was a sunny day and we enjoyed the heat. We made good progress and covered the distance to Norsholm a little quicker than estimated and here there is a railway bridge which can add delays. As we approached the lock there was nowhere to land (the protocol is to land an Ailsa with ropes to secure in the lock) but on closer approach a sign said, don’t worry, be happy, enter without landing anyone, there are short lines in the lock to hang on to. We worried not, happily entered and hung onto the short lines. The lock keeper came and said there was an 18 minute delay so we rigged better lines to hooks in the wall, rigged the ladder up against the wall and Ailsa went to the supermarket to get some olives. Once Ailsa was aboard again, 4 trains had passed but then the rail bridge hinged up and we were through onto Lake Roxen. We motored for a bit, stopped and sailed for lunch then motorsailed to Berg where I had hoped to get to but after 1800, however as we’d made good progress it was only about 1615. We pottered into the basin and the lock gates were closed, some boats were halfway up the 7 lock ladder and we thought we may have been too late to progress. There were pontoon berths but all too narrow at 3.8m I tip toed in to the alongside berth at the end of the pontoon berths but ran aground as we came alongside with a fair bit of boat hanging out over the end. As I was wondering what to do the lock gates started to open and soon we were in the first of the 7 locks, by ourselves so able to position ourselves at the beginning of each where the turbulence is less. By 1700 we were at the top of the flight and thunder clouds were gathering, with some wind gusting we berthed in a pontoon berth and rigged the ladder again from the pulpit. As it was now raining and threatening to rain heavily we decided to abandon the idea of a walk to the supermarket and played a few hands of 3 handed bridge made a ‘proper’ seafood risotto with vegetables and then Ailsa and I went for a walk. There was a beautiful wooden racing boat from olden days moored on a different section of the harbour with an odd mast set up and a dinghy on the aft overhang. Climbing back up the ladder with the timber now as slippery as ice the ladder behaved oddly, once half way up it skidded under the pulpit rather than resting against it. What was happening was that the top half of the ladder was suppported from the hooks at the top on the pulpit whilst the bottom was supported on the ground with one section of the telescoping ladder being free to come and go, once one transferred one’s weight to the top half the ladder wanted to hang vertically and with a coefficient of friction of zero on the legs it just did that with the one section that was free to trombone in and out doing just that. It took me a bit of time to work out what it was doing but once I had done I extended the tromboning section and locked it, making it slightly too long so with a less steep angle but it stopped the tendency to slip and proved fine afterwards.
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