A new design

I have changed the layout of the blog as I was not happy with the previous one. There may be the occasional odd look of the old posts as reformatting existing posts seems to be not always done correctly. Blame blogspot please. There may be some more changes when I can work out why the navigation on a mobile is not working 100%.

But the journey continues meanwhile. Stay tuned for Blisworth to Braunston soon ....

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The "Great" Harecastle Tunnel ....

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... or so the guidebook calls it. I had done two difficult long tunnels on this journey already, Blisworth and Braunston. Both are "wide" tunnels, where two narrowboats can pass each other. I am not a big fan of long tunnels, so the prospect of going through an equally long tunnel (2675m), but with only one-way traffic, because it's so narrow was not something I was looking forward to. Unfortunately on the route up the Trent & Mersey, there is no other option. The Harecastle tunnel was built by the already mentioned canal pioneer James Brindley in the very early days of canal building. It was built for one narrowboat only. As it takes about 45 min to go through, this led to major congestion quickly. A second tunnel was built by Thomas Telford (another famous canal engineer of the later days) completed in 1827. The new tunnel included a towpath (now removed), but also only space for one narrowboat. The original tunnel suffered from subsidence and was subsequently c
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Successful weekend with some drama - Rickmansworth to Tring

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