Angry narrow boaters marooned after worker locks Slaithwaite gate

[Robbo]

TOURISTS were marooned on their narrowboat when a canal worker locked a gate in front of them and drove off.

 

The incident on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal, near Slaithwaite, left Andrew Edwards and his father Brian stranded next to a factory for almost 24 hours.

 

Andrew, a school teacher from Rugby in Warwickshire, said they were on a five-week summer tour that involved travelling through the Standedge Tunnel.

 

He said they had been told to report to British Waterways at lock 34 to be escorted through the tunnel at Marsden.

 

But as they arrived at lock 24 at 11am on Wednesday, a British Waterways worker locked the gate in front of them and told them to move back.

 

Andrew said the worker told them they had to be escorted to go any further and someone would be back at 10am the next day to let them through.

 

Andrew, 36, said: “We were dumped and stranded with absolutely no facilities whatsoever.

 

“We couldn’t get the boat anywhere near the bank for the bushes and the trees.

 

“On walking up above the lock there is a lovely waiting area that must be a quarter of a mile long with bollards, good depth of water which is much more tranquil and peaceful.

 

“It’s not a very nice welcome for us. Now my dog Simba has walked over some broken glass and shredded his feet and I’m having to get a vet out.

 

“We’ve had overwhelming support from local people who love to see all the boaters but say they are all grumpy and cross because of British Waterways.”

 

Andrew said he used to be an ardent British Waterways fan but the condition of the canals near Huddersfield and the customer service he had received meant he would now advise people not to bother.

 

Jeremy Tuck, operations manager British Waterways Yorkshire, said: “We have had a number of incidents on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal recently, where water has been wasted by boaters.

 

“Therefore, to keep water levels high and keep our boaters safe and moving, we have introduced a system of guiding boats through the locks from Slaithwaite to Tunnel End at Marsden.

 

“All customers, without exception, are advised about this when they book their passage through the Standedge Tunnel. In addition, there is signage at appropriate points and waterscape.com also informs boaters of the procedure.

 

“All our staff are fully trained in customer service and communicate with customers regularly and effectively. In this particular case, the team leader, did explain the whole situation to a member of the party on the boat.

 

“He also informed the gentleman where to moor safely and what time a member of staff would return to assist the group with their passage.”

 

Linky

[MartinClark]

It seems that, even if he is a school teacher, he might benefit from a little remedial reading assistance. There are clear notices at the locks in Slaithwaite telling boaters that they cannot proceed further without BW assistance. There are good moorings with all the necessary facilities below Lock 22e in Slaithwaite and that is where they should have waited.

 

Is is possible, of course, that they saw the notices but decided to plough on anyway, and then blame BW when they end up having to moor in a poor spot. And what does the dog stepping on glass have to do with anything?

Edited August 8, 2009 by MartinClark

[RichardH]

What an absolute clown.

 

'Marooned' - Daily Mail nonsense at its best - lest than 24hrs is hardly marooned.

 

Echo Martins comments - people like this should read the well publicised rules and stop blaming the rest of the world for their incompetance.

[tony collins]

What an absolute clown.

 

Echo Martins comments - people like this should read the well publicised rules and stop blaming the rest of the world for their incompetance.

 

In Andrew's defence it seems that not only he but at least two other boats had been advised by BW over the telephone that they should proceed as far as lock 34 and await assistance from there. It seems that Andy also confirmed this advice by e-mail to BW with no contradictory response. It would appear that the usual left hand/right hand business at which BW excells is the main culprit here. Coupled with an insolent and uncommunicative operator on the bank, no wonder the boaters are upset.

 

I should declare an interest here. Andy is a friend of mine and I know him to be an experienced and careful boater. He has probably travelled more of the inland waterways than many on this forum. Not the sort to plunge on regardless.

 

Tony.

[carlt]

If he didn't have the odd incident it wouldn't make his blog worth reading.

[MartinClark]

There is something amiss somewhere. Lock 34e has never been a rendezvous point for BW to meet boaters. It is part of the way up the Marsden flight. If it says Lock 34e in an email then it is either the result of a typo or an error by someone in an office who doesn't know the canal.

 

It was normally the case that BW would meet boaters at Lock 32e. However, there has been a long-term problem with water levels on some of the pounds between Lock 26e and Lock 31e, which some boaters don't seem able to cope with sensibly and end up in difficulty. BW does not want to have to send men out to sort these problems out at times when they are committed to other work, such as operating the tunnel, so they now meet boats in Slaithwaite and assist them up the locks from there.

 

There are, as I mentioned before, clear signs saying that boaters must not proceed beyond Lock 22e without BW assistance. There is a chain and padlock around the balance beam of the head gate of Lock 24e. Andrew must have seen the notices because he mentions them in his blog. Yet he chose to ignore them and carry on further up the canal. Had he heeded the notice and moored up between Locks 21e and 22e, where the banks are vertical concrete walls, so no lack of depth, he would have had the same much more pleasant experience of the canal that most boaters have.

 

He writes that there were moorings above Lock 24e that he could have been allowed to reach.

"On walking up above the lock there is a lovely waiting area that must be a quarter of a mile long with bollards, good depth of water which is much more tranquil and peaceful." He is wrong, however, for although there are lots of bollards along a stretch of between 100 and 200 metres above the lock, they are pretty useless as there is NOT enough depth to moor properly against the bank, which is also the case along most of the rest of the canal. It is a mystery to my why all those bollards were installed there.

 

In other words, a large part of his irritation was that he wanted to be allowed through that lock to what he though were good moorings, but in fact are not very good. Had he then moved back from Lock 24e, as the BW man told him, toward the permanently-moored café boat, he would have found it possible to moor fairly close to the bank, without the bushes in the way that he mentions.

 

It would appear from what I have read of this that he ignored the notices, got himself into an unpleasant position as a result and then tried to put all the blame on BW rather than accepting responsibility himself. To then milk the situation by contacting the local press with a rather biased report on events is helping to give the canal an undeserved bad name and is a kick in the teeth for all those people who have worked for so many years to get the canal re-opened.

[magpie patrick]

There is something amiss somewhere. Lock 34e has never been a rendezvous point for BW to meet boaters. It is part of the way up the Marsden flight. If it says Lock 34e in an email then it is either the result of a typo or an error by someone in an office who doesn't know the canal.

 

Yes it has, that's where I met BW at Easter 2007

[Andy Todd]

When I went through Standedge earlier this year EVERY conversation with someone from BW gave a thing to do.

 

I am 90% sure that one of the numbers mentioned at one point was 34e.

 

Personally I found some of the BW staff less than brilliant in terms of customer service (possible because of the total confusion as to what to do). Certainly I would question the level of customer service training some of the BW staff had had.

 

IMO given the state of the eastern half of the huddersfield narrow the best option is to accept that it was never restored to working state, and close it until it is.

[RichardH]

In Andrew's defence it seems that not only he but at least two other boats had been advised by BW over the telephone that they should proceed as far as lock 34 and await assistance from there. It seems that Andy also confirmed this advice by e-mail to BW with no contradictory response. It would appear that the usual left hand/right hand business at which BW excells is the main culprit here. Coupled with an insolent and uncommunicative operator on the bank, no wonder the boaters are upset.

 

I should declare an interest here. Andy is a friend of mine and I know him to be an experienced and careful boater. He has probably travelled more of the inland waterways than many on this forum. Not the sort to plunge on regardless.

 

Tony.

 

I take your point about his experience but why on earth contact the local rag?

[PeterScott]

why on earth contact the local rag?

Blog also says contacted Robin Evans' secretary and the Yorkshire office. It's the sort of thing Aickman did in 1948 or whenever (AilsaCraig sinking in the Ashton), and it did him no harm :-) In the floods of 2007 I went to Yorkshire office to cry at them in person, for a bit of sympathy (and action), but it didn't do me any good either. It's just the way it is. When you're stuck where you want not-to-be, complaining to the press passes the time, I suppose.

 

I'm with Martin about the thorough signage in Slaithwaite. However hopeless BW may pretend or appear to be, we have to say what they can do better and how they might do it. I don't buy their line about boaters mis-operating the locks, though: there's more to it than that, imho.

 

Anyway, we did the Rochdale and Huddersfield in July too, and my log for Sunday 26th July says " More of 'You have to love BW' [in addition to entertainment on the Rochdale - which is worth another virtual pint]. They asked us yesterday to be at lock 26E as early as possible, so we have said 0930, to which they agreed. Then we phoned [this morning] to confirm we were on our way [from Slaithwaite overnight]: the lads, they said, were sorting out a boat in the Huddersfield locks, and might be a bit late. So we were at lock 26E at 0915 - and just before 1100 the BW men turned up to say 'carry on, and [we] could have just carried-on when we had first arrived'. Then they said an oncoming boat would pass us at lock 31E. We considered leaving gates open for them, but didn't, in the cause of water-conservation. And of course this boat hadn't left Marsden and was not going down at all today." Didn't see any BW people again until they came to padlock 42E behind us. So much for the nannying up the locks.

Edited August 9, 2009 by PeterScott

[mayalld]

IMO given the state of the eastern half of the huddersfield narrow the best option is to accept that it was never restored to working state, and close it until it is.

 

Yes, of course.

 

If you look at canals that were once closed and are now open, there is a long list of them where refusing to open it until it was 100% right was the answer.

 

Congratulations. I had to be up at stupid O'Clock to get the train to London, and before we've even got to Macclesfield, I've read something sufficienly ridiculous to make me laugh.

[RichardH]

Yes, of course.

 

If you look at canals that were once closed and are now open, there is a long list of them where refusing to open it until it was 100% right was the answer.

 

Congratulations. I had to be up at stupid O'Clock to get the train to London, and before we've even got to Macclesfield, I've read something sufficienly ridiculous to make me laugh.

 

Indeed, in fact let's close all but the tourist heavy canals such as the Llangollen in order that boaters have lovely stress free holidays with no feeling of the tremendous effort that went into building these wonderful achievements of engineering. Do people think that life was a breeze for the working boats and that they didn't struggle with water shortages and dodgy locks - no forums to bash BW on there though.

[Pluto]

Indeed, in fact let's close all but the tourist heavy canals such as the Llangollen in order that boaters have lovely stress free holidays with no feeling of the tremendous effort that went into building these wonderful achievements of engineering. Do people think that life was a breeze for the working boats and that they didn't struggle with water shortages and dodgy locks - no forums to bash BW on there though.

I would have loved to have kept canals as they were forty or so years ago, closed or open, when there was historical detail everywhere. But to be realistic, the change to leisure and amenity use of canals was the only way canals could have been preserved both economically and in a way beneficial to the majority. Much historical detail has disappeared, and continues to disappear, but much has been retained for future generations.

 

On recent re-openings, I did wonder where people thought the water would come from when the Rochdale and Huddersfield Narrow. Neither were well supplied originally, and the Rochdale in particular had lost most of its reservoirs in the 1920s. Canal history was also neglected during reopening, and details of the traditional paddle gear on the Rochdale were only compiled after the canal opened, something which has thankfully been addressed on more recent restorations. From the local authority perspective, the reason behind reopening these canals were not boats, regeneration was the main object, with resultant problems for boaters in that those features need by boats, especially water, were neglected. On the Rochdale, this was not BW's fault, as they were only brought in after reopening, but they should have been more aware of the problems on the Huddersfield Narrow, where they were always the responsible authority.

[MartinClark]

Lock 34e has never been a rendezvous point for BW to meet boaters.

Yes it has, that's where I met BW at Easter 2007

If you are convinced that that was where you met BW, then I will take your word for it, Patrick. However, I would say that this would have been unusual. Lock 34e has never been one of the normal points where BW has met boaters, as it is part of the way up the flight.

 

As I mentioned previously, the usual place where boaters awaited the BW team was at Lock 32e, where there were padlocks in place. A couple of years ago BW started padlocking Lock 27e and meeting boats there, but this caused problems with the difficulty of mooring near to the side, so they reverted to Lock 32e.

 

This year they have been putting padlocks on Lock 24e (the guillotine lock), which is why the notices tell boaters not to proceed past Lock 22e without BW assistance.

 

Anyway, no-one's going anywhere at the moment, as they've just slapped a stoppage notice on Lock 24e, saying the operation has become unsafe.

[gaggle]

I take your point about his experience but why on earth contact the local rag?

 

attention seeker.

[gaggle]

IMO given the state of the eastern half of the huddersfield narrow the best option is to accept that it was never restored to working state, and close it until it is.

 

Last time i went down it everything was working sweet except a paddle on a lock by the cafe boat and when the lady from that boat called bw a man was there within 10 minutes and he informed us he would leave and be back in abot 30 minutes which he was , with a load of his mates and stop planks lots of good cheer and manners to match , we were on our way probably in less than an hour in total.

as for contacting the press i have come across this before with other boaters and they were attention seekers as well.

[Mac of Cygnet]

The Huddersfield has been my preferred route south from Sowerby Bridge for the past four years, and very grateful for it I am too. There are difficulties, and I've had to call out BW once (leaking hydraulic paddle) and of course been assisted by them several times up and down the Diggle and Marsden flights. They do a great job in difficult circumstances on this canal, and not once have I encountered anything but cheerful helpfulness, but I imagine they might not suffer fools gladly.

 

Mac

[mayalld]

The Huddersfield has been my preferred route south from Sowerby Bridge for the past four years, and very grateful for it I am too. There are difficulties, and I've had to call out BW once (leaking hydraulic paddle) and of course been assisted by them several times up and down the Diggle and Marsden flights. They do a great job in difficult circumstances on this canal, and not once have I encountered anything but cheerful helpfulness, but I imagine they might not suffer fools gladly.

 

Mac

 

The guys on both sides of the tunnel are, in my experience, invariably friendly and helpful.

 

Of course, I have no experience of how they might be if faced with a complete PITA.

[Allan(nb Albert)]

The guys on both sides of the tunnel are, in my experience, invariably friendly and helpful.

 

Of course, I have no experience of how they might be if faced with a complete PITA.

 

Are you absolutely sure about that?

[mayalld]

Are you absolutely sure about that?

 

Oh yes, I'm sure.

[gaggle]

Are you absolutely sure about that?

 

 

well bowled sir.

[Allan(nb Albert)]

well bowled sir.

 

Probably a bit to subtle for Dave:-)

[mayalld]

Probably a bit to subtle for Dave:-)

 

/me makes mental note that revenge is to be exacted at a later date!

[Naughty Cal]

/me makes mental note that revenge is to be exacted at a later date!

 

Dave, thast not like you

[mayalld]

Dave, thast not like you

 

Oh, it is.

 

I always wait my moment.