Pluto

Wood is the best material for gates because it allows the gate to flex when under pressure. When fitting pairs of gates, they should be made to fit closely at the bottom and against the cill, but with a narrow gap above tapering upwards. On bottom gates, as the they come under pressure as the water fills the lock, the frame should flex to allow the mitre to seal from bottom to top as the gate flexes. The taper can be made quite easily by pulling the mitres together and running a saw down the join. Unfortunately, BW don't seem to be doing this any more; certainly, when I was there recently, the mitres on the gates of many of the locks on the Barrowford flight met at the top before the middle touched, resulting in much waste of water. A little more simple and cheap maintenance, such as ensuring a good fit for lock gate mitres, would go a long way towards saving water. Pity it doesn't seem to be happening.

I have just been doing a bit of a calculation regarding the L&LC's water requirements circa 1913, when over 2 million tons of goods were carried. At 45 tons per boat, this would equate to 44,444 loaded boat movements annually, or 120 boats per day. Monthly tonnages were similar throughout the year, with no great variation. The majority of this traffic was between Wigan and Liverpool, with less than 20 boats per day passing the summit. The figures for boats crossing the summit today are similar, around 20 per day in the summer. Historically six times as much water was required by boats using the lower levels of the canal. The amount of water supplied was then doubled to account for leakage, evaporation etc. At times of heavy rainfall, well over half the water requirement was provided by feeders and streams running into the canal, rather than from reservoirs. From these figures, it is fairly easy to see that the major problem with water supply today is the additional supplies needed to account for the excessive leakage caused by poor or non-existent maintenance since nationalisation, with recent cutbacks in funding exacerbating the situation. What annoys me, besides the sale of lock keepers cottages, and poor water control early in the year, is the visible lack of simple maintenance being carried out, such as ensuring that mitres meet effectively on the gates.

The origin must certainly come from the Germanic 'wenden' - to turn. And with that I'll wend my way home.

To get back to the original post, I can remember these being introduced. Asking if it was still around brought back memories - in any wind they would just go round and round in circles as they were virtually impossible to steer. On the design of boat hulls, I would suggest that traditional canal boats had to have a much better shape than a sea-going boat as they had to carry maximum tonnage in restricted waters without restricting steerage. Certainly wooden wide boats, such as on the Lancashire and Yorkshire waterways, were probably the finest examples of the boat building art, with far more shape to their 2 inch thick planking than anything similar which went to sea. However, as most of that shape was under water, they didn't look that shapely to the public in general. More recently built narrow pleasure boats often have far less shape as they are much shallower and so can get away without the finer lines of earlier boats. Poor under water design is why the majority of modern boats, metal, plywood and plastic, cause far more wash than many traditional boats.

The one at the old Bank Hall colliery in Burnley would be much more useful. For years I have mentioned it to the planning people in Burnley responsible for development on the canal, but to no avail. It is an excellent site, away from housing and with an adjacent wet dock, ideal for a working boatyard. Other L&L dry docks were at Shipley, now built over by housing, Blackburn, now built over by a factory, and those at Wigan, Parbold and Burscough, all of which are less than ideal and in need of investment. Historically, there were many more slipways, and I have identified over thirty sites along the canal, that's a boatyard every five miles.

In the north they're wanning holes.

Compensation water from Winterburn is required to keep Eshton Beck flowing, to preserve wildlife, with slightly less compensation water required for the River Aire, originally to ensure the dilution of pollution from Keighley and Leeds. The difference leaves a small feed for the canal which used to come in above Holme Bridge Lock at a regulation house built there in 1891. Today it is no longer used and the difference in compensation water supplies are measured over a weir on the original canal supply from Eshton Beck which enters the canal below the lock. The compensation volumes were set in 1891, when the L&LC had to get an Act of Parliament for the construction of Winterburn Reservoir. In the 1930s, research suggested that streams which tended to have flashes of water caused by rainfall should not have such onerous compensation volumes, and that the streams should be allowed to have flows which more realistically reflected the weather conditions. However, no legislation was passed and the compensation for Winterburn Reservoir is still based on the 1891 figures. Recently BW have been in discussion with the EA about altering the requirements here but no decision has been made AFAIK.

Of the top of my head, it was Bertole di Novate who first built chamber locks on the Canal de Bereguardo to the south west of Milan in 1458. Da Vinci certainly had his own design, with large vane-type paddles in the gates, as used on the canal in the centre of Milan in the 1490s. One lock survives there, with replica gates, though the canal had been filled in when I visited about 15 years ago. I think there were plans to restore the canal and bring more water space back into use in the city. Shortly after building his locks, da Vinci was chucked out of Italy, and he went to live in France, which could be one reason for Fran ce then becoming the centre for the development of canal technology - ground paddles on the Brussels Canal around 1608 and riser locks on the Canal de Briare around 1610, though only opened circa 1640.

I had always assumed that a sump is somewhere that liquid accumulates, often associated with pumping to remove it. As you say, not many such places on canals. On the L&LC there are 'pools', not 'pounds', so in Lancashire, Liverpool Pool is the lowest, with water running off down the Dock branch and Rufford Line, so it is not a sump.

Not strictly true as reservoirs are filled from streams and not ground water, so runoff can help to fill reservoirs quickly. This is certainly the case with Winterburn as the site was chosen specifically because of the good catchment area. The reservoir fills much more quickly than the other reservoirs on the L&LC, and this is why it is used first. Foulridge reservoirs can take two or three times as long to refill. The Winterburn Valley was also the most northerly on the River Aire not to have limestone outcropping where the reservoir was to be located, as limestone under the reservoir would not hold water. Originally there were to be three reservoirs here, but the cost of the first one proved so high, the canal company gave up the idea of building the other two. Low ground water levels affect the other, natural, canal water supplies, such as streams and ground water percolation. For the second, tunnels provide excellent supplies, with Foulridge Tunnel estimated to provide ten locks full per day in good times. The problems on the L&LC are historical, as the canal has always been short of water, though usage today is much below the level in commercial days. I feel that too much water was allowed to escape early in the season, as it certainly seemed to be running over the bye washes every time I looked. Had BW not sold off their lock houses, and had continued to have lock keepers living on site, the situation would have been much better. It was another short-term cost cutting process which is now revealed as the failure BW were advised it would be at the time.

The location for Kennet on Saturday has changed, and we will now be outside Clarence Dock on the towpath.

The L&LC Society will have the L&LC heritage boat Kennet open for visitors at Granary Wharf on Saturday, and then at Thwaite Mills on Sunday, from 12 till 5 on both days. I will be around if anyone wants a chat. The following weekend, we are down at Goole for the 100th 'Berthday' of the keel Sobriety at the Waterways Museum there, when there will be a few more heritage boats on display, as well as other attractions.

I was down at Gloucester yesterday, looking at the Canal Transport collection which came from Eanam Wharf, Blackburn. There was one file in the uncatalogued section which had details of boat covers, in amongst which were several samples of canvas. There can't be many such examples surviving, should you want to see exactly what was used originally.

If you go, you can see the interpretation panels I produced for them, with details of the history of the canal in Foulridge.

Charlie Atkins told me that in SUC days, canvas was treated with horse grease to colour it and make it waterproof. I never did find out exactly what horse grease was, and whether it was refined from dead horses.

A boat builder trained in a L&LC yard told me that he regarded barges as having a moulded width of 14 feet or over, that is the width over the outside of the frames. Anything smaller is a boat. The moulded width of wooden boats on the L&LC is around 13 feet 6 inches, so they are boats, not barges. However, the iron and steel L&LC boats fall into the barge fold as their moulded width is just over 14 feet, though boatmen on the canal would call them boats as well, calling L&LC boatmen 'bargemen' being regarded as an insult, as bargemen only worked in the docks and had less experience.

This is a photo of the entrance to the former lock cottage, as built by the new owners - hardly in keeping with its previous use. I am sure you can make your own judgement as to what the owners are like. I do hope they feel safe behind the gates, though their insecurity may be the cause of their objection to boats mooring outside the cottage. Greenberfield lock cottage entrance

The 'big old boat' is the heritage boat Kennet, and its home mooring at Greenberfield, so it will return regularly. Over the past few months I have had many boaters complain to me, as part of the L&LC Society, about being hassled by the lock house's new owner. The section of canal between the top of the locks and the bridge is the only one in the area which used to be designated for short term overnight mooring, so in effect there is now no such provision. The real problem is that BW are allowing people living alongside canals to interfere with what were the rights of BW's customers. (The arguments here are about whether these rights still exist) One of my arguments is that surely BW should be supporting their customers, rather than those who do not add anything to BW's income. The mooring at Saltaire has been restricted for the same reasons, with some residents in the flats in the old mill alongside the canal complaining about boats tying up. Surely, if you do not want boats near to your home you should not buy canalside premises. My other argument is that private owners of former canal buildings usually destroy any historical context for that building. For example, many lock cottages now have high fences separating them from the towpath. BW keeps saying it is committed to conserving the built heritage of canals, yet here it is being destroyed.

I have just noticed that a BW sign has appeared at the top of Greenberfield Locks restricting mooring to one hour. I suspect that the owners of the lock cottage, sold by BW a few years ago, have been complaining about boats moored outside the cottage. Not only have they completely destroyed the historical integrity of the site by the alterations they have made to the cottage and its road entrance, and by planting evergreen trees alongside the canal frontage, but they are trying to control how we use the canal. I will certainly be raising this with BW, particularly as I raised the possiblility of such a conflict in 2006, when the cottage was sold. Greenberfield lock cottage sign

We have exactly the same problems with KENNET on the L&LC. As well as the above, the lack of offside tree cutting over the last twenty years or more causes us, as a wide boat, even more problems as the width of the canal has become very restricted in places. You could add to your list people who moor opposite trees hanging over the canal. You would think that if they were moored semi-permanently they would cut the offending trees back as it would make their boat less likely to be hit by passing wide boats, especially given the increasing number of wide hire boats, where the steerers are less likely to realise that you need to crash through the overhanging branches, rather than crash against the moored boat.

Try telling that to BP at the moment, where poor 'artisan' work on a rig has resulted in their current problems. The 'artisan' driving a lorry, bus or train can also kill more people in an instant than a manager driving a desk, and surely there is no greater effect on society than killing someone? And then society as a whole relies on clean water and a good sewage system, again something much more important than the work of any desk-bound manager. What much management does not now realise, now they have become so divorced from the practical side of their business, is how little they impact on what is done in their name by those at the sharp end.

Sorry, I don't recognise those ditches as canals as you can't get L&LC short boats along them. There was a national scheme to identify all bridges which were the responsibility of BW and their condition circa 1960, and you can find the detailed listings in several archives. Following this, the bridges don't seem to have been numbered on some canals, and perhaps it was a BW regional decision. The L&LC used names for bridges up until this time, and then had bridge numbers introduced. I still prefer to use bridge names and try to look blank when people quote numbers. I'll have to have a look at Nicholsons to work out which canals use the BW numbering system, rather than that of former canal companies.

Pity our KENNET is over in Yorkshire this summer - Leeds 17/18 July and Goole, at the Waterways Museum, for Sobriety's 100th berthday 24/25 July - but we could form a highly exclusive KENNET owners club. I suspect that under power you will bounce along the bottom in places at 3' 6" static, but it could be easier if you hired a horse. Edited to say that you will have problems getting under Leigh Bridge.

Contour canals were built as such to keep the cost down - it has little to do with the quality of engineers at the time. Cuttings were just too expensive, and embankments took too long to settle to form a solid bank on which a canal could be placed. British canals tended to have been built by private money, with those of the 1760s and 1770s financed by a new rising merchant and mill owning class. Canals were of secondary importance to them, their individual businesses being in need of most of their money. Consequently, early canals were built on the cheap. By the 1790s and the Canal Mania, purely financial investors considered canals as the main place for their money, so more grandiose schemes came to fruition. It was these canals, despite their better engineering, that were less successful because there was no real overriding economic need for them. On bridge numbers, all canal bridges were renumbered by BW sometime around 1960. All canal bridges were identified at this time, with those which BW had to maintain receiving a number, and those maintained by other bodies being given the number of the previous BW bridge on that canal plus a letter. For example, the first BW bridge on the L&LC is the change line bridge at Bootle which is No.1, with the bridges between there and the canal's terminus having letters and no number, as there is no BW maintained bridge between Bootle and the terminus.