0 Locks, 3 Miles, 2 Swing bridges. Now moored near the Rufford Arm
It’s been a funny sort of day really. What started out as a quiet run down to the Rufford branch junction finished up as a bit of a nightmare. At New lane swing bridge we arrived to find another boat already there and it’s crew were having some difficulty opening the control box on this all electric bridge. I tried my key thinking that their key might be worn but even then it took a bit of wiggling around before I succeeded. We got the boats through OK and secured the bridge and just out of curiosity I tried my key again but would it work? No way, wouldn’t you know it, I wiggled and jiggled all to no avail and then along came the cavalry in the form of a BW worker in a truck. We stopped him and explained the situation so he tried his multitude of keys all to no avail. In the end we left him with the problem and hoped no other boats wanted to open the bridge.
At Crabtree swing bridge we didn’t fare much better as the manual barrier arms have to be unlocked and as luck would have it one of those locks had also seen better days. With the help of a neighbour who lives next to the bridge we finally got through that gap, but as we were closing the bridge a very large 6 axle 40 ton articulated truck arrived. Well there was no way that this monster was going to be able to cross this bridge and there was no where for him to turn. He finished up having to reverse back down the road which is no more than a country lane for anything up to half a mile. It transpired that he had been following his Satellite Navigation system which in so many cases leads drivers up the garden path so to speak. What ever happened to map reading where bridge limits are stated? After this little fiasco which caused a bit if a traffic jam we were quite happy to find a mooring and chill out for the rest of the day.
1734 locks, 3625 miles, 66 Tunnels, 73 swing bridges and 53 lift bridges since Nov 2006
5 comments:
Bloggers Gill and Geoff on Petroc are just ahead of you on the Rufford Arm. They're doing the Ribble Link on Thursday.
Hi Adam
Yes we've made contact a couple of days ago and plan to meet in the next couple of days. Thanks for that.
Dot
I think you mean New Lane Bridge not Great Score. The one by the Farmers Arms? You can have trouble getting your key out if the barriers arent closed properly.
Hopefully it will be okay when we come back that way.
The barriers by the Slipway are rubbish, so is the bridge, I dont know why they havent made it electric.
Thank you yes you are right about the bridge name but the lock was definitely faulty, I know several of the control panels won't release the keys if they are not shut properly. Even WD40 did not help.
They were fixing the lock on the panel today, took them a while. But it did mean we could go through while they were testing it!
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