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The ups and downs of rivers


ditchcrawler

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15 hours ago, RS2021 said:

........ would you class the Middle level as canal?

 

2 hours ago, ditchcrawler said:

I dont think so

Funny when you try to think of something and you can't, the number of times I did the S Oxford

I suppose it rather depends on how you define a canal. Mr Vermuyden spent a lot of time and energy constructing some of the various waterways around the Fens (and numerous other waterways in the country now used for navigation), is a canal a man-made waterway?

 

The original premise of this thread seems to becoming a bit like the,"...What did the Romans ever do for us..." sketch, rather than just the one instance of locking down to a river from a canal, it's beginning to look like there are loads of instances.

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What is unusual at Wychnor is that it is an ordinary lock with an ordinary fall - approaching 6 feet - dropping you from the river into a very long length of canal. It's 23 miles before the canal rejoins the river. Flint Mill is similar but even deeper, although given how far the lock is from the river at Consall I'd argue Flint Mill is on a river-fed canal rather than linking a river to a canal. 

 

Flood locks don't count - they are level in normal flow, but other locks that drop off a river include Dukes (Thames to Oxford Canal) and Firepool (Tone to Bridgwater and Taunton Canal) - in both those cases the locks are shallow and have once been bi-directional depending on river levels, but river management has led to the river always being higher than the canal

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2 hours ago, Martin44 said:

Locking down from Ely Ouse onto Off-cut channel at Denver complex. Whether Great Ouse is still a river in proper sense at that point is a question though.

Personally I don't think the Ely Ouse (really not a sensible name, but that's a different subject ...) is a river in any meaningful sense.

 

The AG Wright sluice at Denver (which the lock bypasses) is used to lower the water level in times of flood. This must be one of the few "rivers" where the level goes down in flood conditions !!   (The reason is to control the amount the water level goes up at Bottisham Lock, some  26 miles inland. 

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On 18/07/2020 at 22:19, Wanderer Vagabond said:

Salters Lode/Denver Sluice? (depending on the tide).

 

Get your timings right, and you can lock down from the Ely Ouse to the tidal Ouse at Denver Sluice, then head up the New Bedford River to Earith, turn left and lock down through Hermitage Lock, then continue along the Old West River and Ely Ouse back to the start, having passed downhill htrough two locks, without going uphill through any!

Edited by David Mack
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41 minutes ago, David Mack said:

 

Get your timings right, and you can lock down from the Ely Ouse to the tidal Ouse at Denver Sluice, then head up the New Bedford River to Earith, turn left and lock down through Hermitage Lock, then continue along the Old West River and Ely Ouse back to the start, having passed downhill htrough two locks, without going uphill through any!

That sounds almost like one of M C Escher's drawings:rolleyes:

 

image.png.6229eb48e622aa465f617a22f7cd342d.png

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5 hours ago, Wanderer Vagabond said:

That sounds almost like one of M C Escher's drawings:rolleyes:

 

image.png.6229eb48e622aa465f617a22f7cd342d.png

I was just about to make the same comment. I've done that trip - the funniest bit was passing twice a boat going the other way (slowly) between Ely and Hermitage, who looked very surprised to see me again.  Useless fact about the tides, the power they dissipate is (from memory - I have lost the book) about six times global electricity generation capacity. 

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