Looming directly beyond Warwick is the Hatton lock flight of 21 locks. They are spread over about 1.5 miles with a total rise of 45 metres. In the middle there is a section where there are about 10 directly one after the other with only a boat length in between. The flight used to be called the "stairway to heaven" as the working boaters received their wages at the top. A euphemism if ever I have heard one.
The day I had planned to tackle the flight it was raining in the morning. As the forecast was bad for the foreseeable future, I went for it anyway. As this is hard work, I definitely wanted to share the locks with another boat. So I sat under the bridge before the first lock and .... waited ... and waited. After waiting for about an hour, I gave up. There was not a soul in sight.
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| Waiting for company before the Hatton locks |
After having done the first two locks on my own, I came to a slightly longer pound with a boat moored in it. As I was preparing the lock, a woman came running from the boat and asked me to wait for them as they had decided after all that they were going to do the locks today as I showed up. Phew!!
The boat had a large St. George's flag at the stern. I have a (little) EU flag in a flower pot. Despite this theoretical culture clash we got along fine. They were quite experienced and had done the flight before. It was quite difficult though, as somehow we didn't manage to establish a firm routine to repeat at every lock. Every one of them we handled slightly differently, swapped sides, swapped positions etc. It meant having to be fully focussed the whole time.
Going up a lock on my own I still find hard sometimes. As I want to avoid climbing up the slimy lock ladder, I have to step off the boat with rope in hand before the lock. As the boat drifts into the lock slowly, I run up the steps with the rope to stop the boat from the top before it hits the gate at the far end. This sounds worse than it is as everything moves really slowly. However, it was often a moment of tension in these locks as the steps curve far away from the lock gates, so the line was just long enough to keep with me. A lot can go wrong in those few seconds, as the line can be too short or get tangled (so I'd have to drop it), the line can catch on something (as it did a number of times), the boat can be too fast and hit the gate (yep, done that a few times too) or I could stumble and fall down the steps or into the lock (hasn't happened so far fortunately). It was always alright in the end, but we had to improvise a few times as there was a strong wind in the afternoon and sometimes the desired actions didn't quite work as planned.
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| Midway break for a chocolate biscuit |
We made it to the top in about 5 hours, an average of 4 locks an hour, which I find not bad. Some more stats: each one of the lock paddles has a hydraulic mechanism with 23 rotations of the handle (the windlass in boater terms) to fully open it. So all in all we did about 500+ turns of the windlass each. My arms felt ready to fall off at the end of the day.
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| It just never ends .... |
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| Pond near the top lock |
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| Looking down the flight with St. Mary's Church in the distance |
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| Stairway to heaven |
The way it worked was that the husband steered the boat from one lock to the next and the wife did all the opening and closing of gates and paddles (this I have found is the norm on boats with male/female couples). I steered my boat and opened and closed gates and paddles too. The wife complimented me at the end on the bravery of doing this on my own. But in fact I think she had done more work than I had as she was constantly going back and forth between the locks to close the gates behind us and prepare the next one up. It is all about perception.
These were the last wide locks for quite a long time. Next I'll be turning of the GU onto a narrow canal. Hurrah!
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