Doing the Ribble link …..

Tuesday 13th July 2022

… by car and foot!

Today we swapped narrowboat Jannock for a country cottage called “Pas de l’eau”. It’s quite homely and comfortable if a little small. We will endeavour to visit the places that were on our original itinerary and wish list, with perhaps a few further afield. The time spent not moving the boat should allow us to visit the lake district while we are this far north.

We started off by ‘doing’ the Ribble Link. We used shanks’ pony and our car which allowed us to cover most of it. We began by visiting Tarleton and the lock down onto the River Douglas. We got there at 10 minutes past 10 which would have been about the time we should have been passing through. The weather was sunny and whilst there we met a CaRT engineer doing an ‘asset survey’. He knew nothing about the navigation side but was expecting to see boats using the lock. We explained about the cancellations and he said that their team had been hit hard by a resurgence of Covid.

 

After a short walk along the banks of the Douglas we then got into the car and drove to Savick bridge on the A583 at Lea Gate. We parked in the pub car park and went to find the Rotating Sealock just the the left of the new building being built on the other side of the road. The lock gate was down and the signal lamp was Red.

 

Then back to the Lea Gate public house for a light lunch – however, being a ‘Ungry Orse’ establishment the lunchtime meal deals were very good value so we had a main meal there instead. Fish and chips for Graham and Scampi for Brenda – proper holiday food. 

We then drove to find Haslam park and the top of the Savick Brook navigation. The weed here in the basin and on the main canal was horrid - glad we are not trying to plough through it. We walked down the staircase of three locks where we would have needed to reverse up and then walked down the path passing under a railway and visiting all the other locks.

 

 

Along the path we met a fisherman, lots of cyclists and found wild raspberries – delicious. We then returned back up the brook to the car and paid a visit to Cadley services to use the facilities.

 

Then we returned to Jannock, quite early but Graham is doing blood bike control tonight so we needed to run the generator to top up the batteries.

G&B