Britain, for example, experimented with a narrow boat trip along a canal and a sleigh ride.
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From Mbandaka, we hired a canoe and motored upriver, our long, narrow boat slicing through the tannin-rich water like a pencil.
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Hary is in the back; the butt cheeks of his shorts are patched from years spent perched on the rails of the narrow boat.
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The police were piloting a narrow boat, and their prey was an even smaller vessel, according to a statement Friday from the Guardia Civil, the national police.
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Explaining how sorry Ryan feels for bringing his friend to his dad's commandeered narrow boat back in series 1, Frances assures Tommy that Ryan thinks fondly of him.
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Sightseeing narrow-boat trips run from Camden Lock to Little Venice.
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The town is on either side of the River Nene (Old Course). A narrow boat marina provides berths and boats for hire.
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This section of the GVLR's track crosses the site of the Butterley Park Reservoir. The GVLR operates for the benefit of tourists and is part of the Midland Railway - Butterley. The Newlands Inn served the Cromford Canal as a place where the narrow boat horses were changed and probably where the narrow boat crews were refreshed prior to or after legging it through the tunnel.
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The last regular long-distance narrow-boat-carrying contract, to a jam factory near London, ended in October 1970, although lime juice continued to be carried by narrow boat from Brentford to Boxmoor until 1981, and aggregate from Thurmaston to Syston from 1976 until 1988. Under the Transport Act 1962, the British Transport Commission was split into several new organisations, including the British Railways Board and the London Transport Board, with the inland waterways of Britain becoming part of the new British Waterways Board (BWB). In the same year, a remarkably harsh winter saw many boats frozen into their moorings, unable to move for weeks at a time. That was one of the reasons given for the decision by the BWB to formally cease most of its commercial narrow boat traffic on the canals.
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Interview by Ian George in "Narrow Dog to Carcassonne" In 2009 the Darlington's narrow boat, Phyllis May, was destroyed by fire while moored in the Canal Cruising Company's boatyard in Crown Street, Stone.“Author's Barge Destroyed by Fire”, Stoke Sentinel, 25 November 2009 The fire, which had started in a nearby boat, spread to an adjacent one and then to the Phyllis May, which was gutted from bow to stern.“Staffordshire author sees famous narrow boat go up in flames”, Birmingham Post, 26 November 2009 It was replaced by Phyllis May II.
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One episode featured the Blue Peter pony for the disabled 'Rags'. Travelling around the country, they got involved in diverse activities like motor racing, rowing, aerobatics and painting. In each series Noakes was featured travelling around Britain in a particular mode, e.g. sailing, narrow boat, walking, open top car, etc.
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Historic Narrow Boat owners Club There are many replicas, such as Hadar, ornately painted with traditional designs, usually of roses and castles. Boats not horse-drawn may have a refurbished, slow-revving, vintage diesel engine. There are some steam-driven narrow boats such as the ex-Fellows Morton and Clayton steamer President.
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The basin is becoming something of a visitor attraction. Narrowboats and cruisers can be seen along the private stretch of moorings and day boat hire was introduced in 2007. Boats can be hired for full days or half days. There is a unique narrow boat café which was itself a former canal boat.
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The rebec (sometimes rebecha, rebeckha, and other spellings, pronounced or ) is a bowed stringed instrument of the Medieval era and the early Renaissance. In its most common form, it has a narrow boat-shaped body and 1-5 strings. Played on the arm or under the chin, the technique and tuning may have influenced the development of the violin.
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Because the average width of a canal channel (about 30' to 40' feet) is less than the length of a full- size narrow boat (72') it is not usually possible to turn a boat in the canal. Winding holes are typically indentations in the off-side (non-towpath side) of the canal, allowing sufficient space to turn the boat.
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Stour is an all-wooden motor narrow boat powered by a Bolinder 15 h. p. diesel engine. It was built as a tar tanker in 1937 by Fellows Morton and Clayton at their Uxbridge dockyard for fuel oil carriers Thomas Clayton Ltd of Oldbury. The hull has oak planked sides, elm bottoms and pine deck with a fully fitted traditional boatman's cabin.
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Their father has abandoned the family and their mother has gone into hospital. The book does not say, but it is implied the mother suffers from depression. The children's uncle and aunt take them on a narrow boat holiday to France. The children quickly decide they do not like it, and decide to make their own way back to England.
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He returned to England in 1937 and bought North Wyke Farm near North Tawton in Devon which he worked during the Second World War. In 1946-7, influenced by L. T. C. Rolt's book Narrow Boat, he joined the Inland Waterways Association and bought a narrow boat which he converted for cruising, working on it on the open canalside near Norwood while he was living in Chiswick. With his 9-year- old son as crew, a 429-mile tour of English canals occupied June and July 1947 including stops to repair the boat's diesel engine and to continue the conversion work. In 1948 he was again drawn to emigrate to Africa (this time to Southern Rhodesia), where he was engrossed in building up yet another farm when he met his death, while dealing with a bull, on 30 December 1949.
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The Claphams had three sons; Adam a television producer, Marcus and Giles and a daughter, Antonia. Their nephew is Nicolas Rea, 3rd Baron Rea. Clapham spent much of his life including his later years living in Hill Street just off Berkeley Square in Mayfair where he became president of the Resident's Association. He enjoyed sailing and had a ketch in the Mediterranean and a narrow boat on the Grand Union Canal.
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Another historic term for a narrow boat is a long boat, this name was used in the Midlands and especially on the River Severn and connecting waterways to Birmingham. Usage has not quite settled down as regards (a) boats based on narrowboat design, but too wide for narrow canals; or (b) boats the same width as narrowboats but based on other types of boat. Narrowboats may have ship prefix NB.
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In an early faux pas he filmed a report to camera on the Ilford North by-election and was deeply critical of the constituency. Unfortunately he was filming in Ilford South at the time. Grundy was also the producer of The Flower of Gloster (1967), a children's TV serial. The drama, about four youngsters who take a narrow boat from North Wales to London, was broadcast as 13 weekly episodes.
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Latest coastal weather observations for Cato Island. The island is almost entirely surrounded by reefs: three narrow boat passages cross the reefs on the northern side. The best entrance is the center one, located north of the eastern end of Cato Island; it has a conspicuous rock at half tide on its eastern side. The island lies on the western end of an oval-shaped reef enclosing a lagoon.
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The opening meeting was held on 7 April 1928 and the racing was independent (not affiliated to the sports governing body the National Greyhound Racing Club). The stadium was run by the Northampton Greyhound Racing Association and racing was held every Thursday and Saturday. A narrow boat was pulled across the South Quay of the River Nene for people to use as a way of getting to the venue.
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The narrowboat (one word) definition in the Oxford English Dictionary is: Earlier quotations listed in the Oxford English Dictionary use the term "narrow boat", with the most recent, a quotation from an advertisement in Canal Boat & Inland Waterways in 1998, uses "narrowboat". The single word "narrowboat" has been adopted by authorities such as the Canal and River Trust, Scottish Canals and the magazine Waterways World to refer to all boats built in the style and tradition of commercial boats that were able to fit in the narrow canal locks. Although some narrow boats were built to a design based on river barges and many conform to the strict definition of the term, it is incorrect to refer to a narrowboat (or narrow boat) as a widebeam or a barge. In the context of the British inland waterways, a barge is usually a much wider, cargo-carrying boat or a modern boat modelled on one, certainly more than wide.
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The Prickly Pear Cays, sometimes spelt as Prickley Pear Cays, are a small pair of uninhabited islands about six miles from Road Bay, Anguilla, in the Leeward Islands of the Caribbean. They are divided by a narrow boat channel between Prickly Pear East and Prickly Pear West. Prickly Pear Cays were classified as 'wildlands' by the "Eastern Caribbean Natural Area Management Programme" (ECNAMP). In addition, Prickly Pear Cays are one of six marine protected areas of Anguilla.
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It was well-reviewed, and it was not long before the first printing sold out, although with the shortage of paper at the end of the war a new printing had to wait for some months. Sir Compton Mackenzie described it as "an elegy of classic restraint unmarred by any trace of sentiment. His pen is as sure as the brush of a Cotman. Narrow Boat will go on the shelf with White and Cobbett and Hudson".
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It wasn't until the early 2000s did the feminists and activists start using the word snippa to be identified with the female genitalia. Snippa’s origins can be traced back to many different Swedish dialects. Its popular definition "refers to something small and/or narrow, for example a small pike or a narrow boat". In regards to genitalia, "it might have been used to refer to female genitalia of cows and pigs in the early twentieth century".
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He set out these ideas more fully in his book High Horse Riderless, a classic of green philosophy. A bridge (no. 164) on the Oxford Canal in Banbury bears his name (in commemoration of his book Narrow Boat), as does a centre at the boat museum at Ellesmere Port in Cheshire. A blue plaque to Mr. Rolt was unveiled in at Tooley's Boatyard, Banbury on 7 August 2010 as part of the centenary celebrations of his birth.
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The Darkest Universe is a 2016 black comedy film by Will Sharpe and Tom Kingsley. The film premiered at the London Comedy Film Festival (LOCO) in April 2016, and subsequently screened at the East End Film Festival in July 2016. The film was written by Tiani Ghosh and Will Sharpe and was shot over a three-year period from 2013 to 2015. It is set on the canals of London and tells the story of the disappearance of a young couple on a narrow boat.
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Narrow Boat is a book about life on the English canals written by L. T. C. Rolt. Originally published in 1944 by Eyre & Spottiswoode, it has continuously been in print since. It describes a four-month trip that Rolt took with his bride Angela at the outbreak of the Second World War. The book is credited with a revival of interest in the English canals, leading directly to the creation of the Inland Waterways Association, which spearheaded the restoration and leisure use of the canals.
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Through the Butterley Tunnel and along the narrow Derwent valley it would be to narrow boat standards, similar to the Trent and Mersey. At the last minute before the Bill was to be presented to Parliament, Richard Arkwright raised a problem. The assumption had been that water would come from Cromford Sough, the drainage from the Wirksworth lead mines. Arkwright complained that the canal crossed his land and insisted that water should be obtained from the river by raising the height of the weir at Masson Mill.
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The Rolts' first four-month cruise was described in a book which Rolt initially called Painted Ship. Despite sending the manuscript to many publishers, he had to put it aside, as it was felt that there was no market for books about canals. It was not until a magazine article he wrote came to the attention of the countryside writer H. J. Massingham that Rolt had the break which led to the book finally being published, in December 1944, under the title Narrow Boat.
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The Pegasus is a powerful and fast two person racing and cruising dinghy designed by Uffa Fox in 1958. It was notable for being a boat capable of being built at home using marine ply but still with an efficient and aesthetically pleasing round bilged hull form. The boat has a narrow bow entry and a planing hull, and it carries a mainsail, a jib, and a large symmetric spinnaker. Stability is achieved with a trapeze allowing this relatively narrow boat by modern standards to carry a large sail plan.
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In August 1972, he hosted four editions of BBC Radio 1's Junior Choice. Overlapping with his period on Blue Peter, Noakes and Shep made six series of Go With Noakes in which they travelled around Britain getting involved in diverse activities like motor racing, rowing, aerobatics and painting. In each series Noakes used a particular mode of transport to get about such as a yacht, on foot, narrow boat, or classic car. A total of 31 episodes of Go With Noakes were broadcast between 28 March 1976 and 21 December 1980.
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A common misconception is that pochettes were intended for children. They were actually conceived for adults; their small size allowed them to be used where the larger violins were too cumbersome to carry, or too expensive to own. The instrument's body is very small, but its fingerboard is long relative to the instrument's overall size, to preserve as much of the instrument's melodic range as possible. Pochettes come in many shapes, with the narrow boat shaped ones called "sardinos" being one of the most common, along with the pear- shaped type.
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So that the butty boatman could lengthen or shorten towline as needed, the towline wasn't tied- off on the bow, instead travelled over the buttyboat through permanent running blocks on stands or retractable middle masts and managed in the stern.Canal Jargon N-Z On a wide canal, such as the Grand Union Canal, the pair could be roped side-to-side ("breasted up") and handled as a unit through working locks. Cargo-carrying by narrow boat diminished from 1945 and the last regular long-distance traffic disappeared in 1970. However, some traffic continued into the 1980s and beyond.
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In 1992, John Berry met vocalist Rachel Speight and the second incarnation of Die Laughing was born. The pair began writing new tracks and further band members Dave Shiner and Ruth Tyson were recruited alongside a drummer to complete the live line up. The band recorded their first demo Poems of Your Life at Cage Studios in Sheffield which saw the group record four tracks from the first incarnation of the band. After purchasing a drum machine (Dr Duck), the band played their first live show on 12 February 1993, at The Narrow Boat venue in Nottingham.
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The area around the village is popular for hillwalking with many routes tracing the beauty of the nearby Clydach Gorge or Cwm Clydach, and the old trackbed of the Merthyr, Tredegar and Abergavenny Railway is a cycleway and walkway and the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal can be walked or travelled by narrow boat. There is a picnic site and caravan park alongside the River Clydach, easily reached from the A465 Heads of the Valleys road. The ironworks are some 300 metres away, across the river. The ironworks were built during the late 18th century and are a Scheduled Ancient Monument.
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Originally Mill No.2 dating from 1780, today it is known as The Clock Warehouse The last grain-carrying narrow boat delivered its cargo to Shardlow in the early 1950s. In 1957 the stable block which had housed over 100 towing horses was demolished, latterly followed by some of the smaller warehouses and buildings over the next twenty years. A campaign led by the newly-formed Trent & Mersey Canal Society resulted in the designation in 1975 of the Shardlow Wharf Conservation Area, which today encompasses over 50 Grade II listed buildings. During the 1970s, the men-only "Pavilion Club" flourished in the old cricket club.
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Although a 'Northampton Parkway' or 'Daventry Parkway' railway station on the site of the former station has been mooted from time to time, there have never been any firm plans. Narrow Boat public house Lower Weedon and Upper Weedon are to the south of the village. The northern boundary of the village follows the old A45 to the west, then south to just outside Everdon, then skirts Everdon Wood and Everdon Stubbs, and borders Stowe Nine Churches to the southeast, and lies to a short distance east of the A5 up to the A45, next to Flore parish. To the south of the parish is the 162m Weedon Hill.
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The trough sides rise only about above the water level, less than the depth of freeboard of an empty narrow boat, so the helmsman of the boat has no visual protection from the impression of being at the edge of an abyss. The trough of the Cosgrove aqueduct has a similar structure, although it rests on trestles rather than iron arches. It is also less impressively high. Every five years the ends of the aqueduct are closed and a plug in one of the highest spans is opened to drain the canal water into the River Dee below, to allow inspection and maintenance of the trough.
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Eustace is an historic narrow boat built for the Wolverhampton-based company Thomas Bantock & Co. for railway transhipment work in the English Black Country. In the 1950s a cabin was added and Alfred Matty & Co of Deepfields, Coseley converted the hull to a spoon dredger for canal clearance work. Following a fire it was cut up but the fore end of the boat is now owned by the Black Country Living Museum where it can be seen on the path at the rear of the boat dock. The boat is a rare survivor of a type of construction unique to Thomas Bantock & Co. it was shortly due to be restored.
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In 1967, Granada TV broadcast a 13-part children's serial called The Flower of Gloster, loosely based on Thurston's original. When their boatyard owner father is taken ill, his eldest son Dick, accompanied by siblings 10-year-old Michael and 12-year- old Elizabeth, volunteers to deliver a narrow-boat – The Flower of Gloster - to a buyer on his behalf. During their 220-mile trip south they make new friends, face dangers and difficulties, played out against the changing patterns of the British countryside. Their course winds its way from Wales, through the inland waterways of England to the Pool of London at Tower Bridge.
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Operation of caisson lock The fall over the route is , which meant problems with supplying adequate water. The Cam brook was an inadequate source of water above Camerton, and the mills along it had water rights. Each narrow boat travelling through the series of locks (22 of them each deep) with a 25-ton load of coal caused 85 tons of water to be discharged into the brook below the locks. As a result, the canal was designed with all 22 locks in one flight near Combe Hay and a pumping engine to raise water from the Cam; this was the first canal to depend entirely on pumping.
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L. T. C. Rolt's book Narrowboat (1944) had set in motion a revival of interest in the canals of Britain. In 1946, after reading an account by Samuel Smiles of the origins of the Royal Canal in Ireland, he and his wife Angela decided to explore its waterways. As using his narrow boat in Ireland was impossible (it was too long for the locks on the Grand Canal) he set about finding a smaller boat, ending up with a cruiser rented in Athlone. The schedule was tight as the locks to the River Liffey in Dublin from both Royal and Grand Canals were due to close for maintenance and the supply of petrol for pleasure boating was uncertain.
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Two million tonnes of aggregate were carried on the Grand Union (River Soar) between 1976 and 1996, latterly using wide beam barges. Aggregate continues to be carried between Denham and West Drayton on the (wide) Grand Union Canal and on the tidal estuary of Bow Creek (which is the eventual outflow of the Lee & Stort Navigation). A few people are doing their best in the 21st century to keep the tradition of canal-borne cargo- carrying alive, mostly by "one-off" deliveries rather than regular runs, or by selling goods such as coal to other boaters. Enthusiasts remain dedicated to restoring the remaining old narrow boats, often as members of the Historic Narrow Boat Owners Club.
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Zac (Will Sharpe) is a lonely, highly strung city trader on the edge of a psychological breakdown. He has lost everything—his job, his girlfriend Eva (Sophia Di Martino) and, most devastatingly, his weird and wayward younger sister Alice (Tiani Ghosh), the only family he had left. Alice is now a missing person, having disappeared on a narrow boat trip along with her kindred drifter and boyfriend Toby (Joe Thomas). Zac becomes increasingly frustrated with the futile attempts of the police to find them and, eventually, decides to take matters into his own inexpert hands by starting a terribly executed video blog and scouring the dark canals of the UK in a desperate, perhaps even deluded search for clues.
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According to Archimedes' principle, the mass (weight) of a boat and its cargo on the bridge pushes an equal mass of water off the bridge. The towpath is mounted above the water, with the inner edge carried on cast-iron pillars in the trough. This arrangement allows the water displaced by the passage of a narrow boat to flow easily under the towpath and around the boat, enabling relatively free passage. Pedestrians, and the horses once used for towing, are protected from falling from the aqueduct by railings on the outside edge of the towpath, but the holes in the top flange of the other side of the trough, capable of mounting railings, were never used.
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Merry Hill Allotments 2004 In 1769 James Brindley supervised the building of a canal between Birmingham and the Black Country. This waterway came to be known, within 60 years, as the 'old' Main Line Canal after Thomas Telford constructed a straighter, broader New Birmingham Main Line Canal, which opened in 1829 to carry an ever-increasing volume of narrow boat traffic. Brindley and Telford's waterways attracted industrial entrepreneurs including Matthew Boulton, and James Watt who bought by the canal at Merry Hill, about a mile from the firm's Soho Manufactory in Handsworth and opened the Soho FoundryAvery Weigh-Tronix in 1796 'for the purpose of casting everything relating to our steam engines'. As the local population grew, tension developed between them and the travellers.
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Plaque at 11 Gower Street, London Aickman is probably best remembered for his co-founding of the Inland Waterways Association, a group devoted to restoring and preserving England's then-neglected and largely derelict inland canal system. The association was sparked off by a letter sent by Aickman to L. T. C. Rolt following the publication in 1944 of Rolt's highly successful book Narrow Boat, describing the declining and largely unknown world of the British canals. The inaugural meeting took place on 15 February 1946 in London, with Aickman as chairman and Rolt as honorary secretary. The IWA organised successful campaigns and attracted notable supporters, including as president the writer and parliamentarian Sir A. P. Herbert and as vice-president the naturalist Peter Scott.
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Painted Boats (US titles The Girl on the Canal or The Girl of the Canal) is a black-and-white British film directed by Charles Crichton and released by Ealing Studios in 1945. Painted Boats, one of the lesser-known Ealing films of the period, is brief (63 minutes long), uses a little-known cast and has a slight storyline. It is however considered significant by waterways enthusiasts as a fictionalised documentary, providing a rare extensive filmic depiction of a long-gone way of life on England's working canal system in the 1940s. The narration was by Louis MacNeice, including some verse specially written to suit the onscreen action, most notably the sequence in which the narrow boat is being 'legged' through one of the tunnels.
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"Narrow Boat" was an immediate success both with critics and public, with fan mail arriving at the Rolts' boat at Tardebigge where they were then moored. Two of the letters Rolt received were from Robert Aickman and Charles Hadfield who were both to figure prominently in the next phase of his life, that of a campaigner. He invited Aickman and his wife Ray to join them on Cressy and Aickman later described that trip as "the best time I have ever spent on the waterways". It was on this voyage they decided to form an organisation that a few weeks later, in May 1946, at Robert's London flat, was named the Inland Waterways Association, with Aickman as chairman, Hadfield as vice-chairman and Rolt as secretary.
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In 1944, Tom Rolt published his book Narrow Boat, which reflected on his journey around the canals in 1939 in his boat Cressy. The book was popular and Rolt received a number of letters following its publication. This included a letter from Robert Aickman, a literary agent and aspiring author, who made the suggestion that a society to campaign for the regeneration of canals should be formed. Tom Rolt supported this idea and on Saturday 11th August 1945, he Robert and their wives, Angela and Ray, met for the first time aboard Cressy at Tardebigge on the Worcester & Birmingham Canal. The couples developed a good working relationship with the inaugural meeting of The Inland Waterways Association taking place on 15 February 1946 London at Aickman’s flat in Gower Street, London.
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The Aire and Calder was built for commercial freight, and although the volume carried has dropped significantly, particularly since coal deliveries to Ferrybridge power station by canal stopped, the navigation still carried 300,000 tonnes of freight in 2007, down from 1.64 million tonnes in 2000. The Leeds to Castleford section and much of the Wakefield branch are now mainly used as leisure routes, but below Castleford, the industrial nature of the waterway is more obvious, and pleasure boats must give way to commercial vessels. 600 tonne vessels, designed to make maximum use of the locks, produce considerable wash, and are not as manoeuvrable as a narrow boat. Much of the ex-industrial (western) part of the Navigation now has the appearance of a tree-lined, gently-twisting river.
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When Lady Sandra Abbott (Imelda Staunton) discovers that her husband of 35 years (John Sessions) is having an affair with her best friend (Josie Lawrence), she seeks refuge in London with her estranged, older sister Bif (Celia Imrie). Sandra is a fish out of water next to her outspoken, serial-dating, free-spirited sibling who lives on an inner-city council estate. But difference is just what Sandra needs and she reluctantly lets Bif drag her along to a community dance class where she meets her sister's friends, Charlie (Timothy Spall), Jackie (Joanna Lumley) and Ted (David Hayman). She gradually begins to enjoy herself, even going river swimming with Bif. Charlie is living on a narrow boat, having had to sell his house to pay for his wife’s care home and tells Sandra that one day he will cross the Channel in his boat and travel the canals of France.
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The river was connected to the River Thames and London by the Kennet & Avon Canal in 1810 via Bath Locks; this waterway – closed for many years, but restored in the last years of the 20th century – is now popular with narrow boat users. Bath is on National Cycle Route 4, with one of Britain's first cycleways, the Bristol & Bath Railway Path, to the west, and an eastern route toward London on the canal towpath. Although Bath does not have an airport, the city is about from Bristol Airport, which may be reached by road or by rail via Bristol Temple Meads station. Bath is served by the Bath Spa railway station (designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel), which has regular connections to London Paddington, Bristol Temple Meads, Cardiff Central, Swansea, Exeter St Davids, Plymouth and Penzance (see Great Western Main Line), and also Westbury, Warminster, Salisbury, Southampton Central, Portsmouth Harbour and Brighton (see Wessex Main Line).
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It was during his retirement that he was involved in the formation of the Seagull Trust. At Torphichen in 1947, MacKay resurrected the Ancient order of St John. He was a canal enthusiast who had learned about two other canal projects, one in England, run by Claire Hanmer, who converted a narrow boat for the service of disabled people on the Midland canals, and a project in Wales, the Sunshine Boat, run under the auspices of the Prince of Wales Trust. From the project in Wales, Charles Quant drew attention to the Inland Waterways Amenity Advisory Council (IWAAC) of the realisation that his operation had a previously unforeseen secondary advantage of demonstrating that sections of the canal system regarded as "remainder" canals, were being used to good effect and as such his organisation now could fulfil a dual role of providing a service to disabled people and demonstrate the advantages of canal travel to the wider public.
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During the navigation improvements of 1803–1811, a new lock cut was made to bypass a large meandering loop of the River Hull around Struncheon Hill. William Chapman, who looked after the works, built the lock to the standard dimensions of the rest of the navigation – to take vessels long, by wide. This is a standard known for Yorkshire Keels, however on further investigation it seems the lock was built to longer dimensions and in 2009 Michael Askin took a Royalty Class Narrow Boat Victoria of in length through the lock – though the boat would only fit pointing upstream due to low water levels not allowing enough depth over the top cill. Lower chamber sluice, and behind, the pumping station The lock was originally built as a single lock, but like Snakeholme lock, it was found that at low tides there was not enough depth to get over the bottom cill, so a second chamber was added.
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In Warwickshire, work on the Lower Avon was nearing completion after a decade of hard work and it was confirmed that nobody owned the rights to the upper reaches which led to Stratford-upon-Avon. The prospect of a connection from the Severn through to the Midlands was in sight when the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal was threatened with abandonment In 1958 a wealthy businessman member named John Smith, who had an honorary post in the National Trust suggested that it might take over the canal. Another enthusiastic member, David Hutchings, took over the task of restoration after the National Trust agreed a five-year lease on the canal a year later pointing out that the cost of filling it in would be £120,000 whereas the cost of restoration was only £40,000, and completed it on time despite the extremely cold winter of 1962-3. The reopening coincided with the 400th Anniversary celebration of Shakespeare's birth at Stratford-upon-Avon and the Aickmans accompanied the Queen Mother in a much-publicized narrow boat trip to reopen the canal into the river as part of a large festival that included 200 boats outside the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.
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