Lyra's Travels

Saturday 7th April 2012
Yet again the weather could have been better. But I suppose we've been spoiled a bit recently. We set off from Gargrave this morning to climb Greenber Field Locks, the last three locks to the summit level of the L&L.
Arriving at the bottom gates there was a boat waiting to go in. A look at the pound above showed that we have a problem, the water level was very low.
When the gates opened I kept an eye on their progress and they seemed to be ok. After our boats had entered the lock I took a walk up to the next one to see what was happening. There was a wide beam waiting to come down, so while it was cycling though our boats started up the low pound. We expected to have trouble in this pound because Lyra is very deep, but while she did drag along the bottom a bit, she made it.
Rising onto the top pound we found that even this was a bit low, but not too bad. We travelled up as far as the winding hole just before bridge 153 where we turned around and returned to moor up at bridge 154a for easy access to the town.
I took a walk into the centre of Barnoldswick (pronounced Barlick) for a look around. It's a lovely little place, whose major industry is Rolls Royce jet engine research. There is a butcher and baker as well as several small specialist businesses, but the place seem to die on Saturday afternoon.