The Summit after 8 miles and 42 Locks.

Sunday 6th Sepember, 2015 in Marsden.
We awoke to a peerless morning. What a mirror image! M said that she would love to buy the house opposite, which has a beautiful position and an immaculate garden - oh, and a cat!

We have mentioned water shortages a lot in the last week and today we passed one of the reservoirs close to the summit. The water level was well down.

A lot of the pounds are very short so that taking a lock-full of water out of them (as we fill the lock below to climb up) lowers them even more by several inches. Despite some of the pounds being a foot or so lower, we managed to get through each of them without problems.

Lock 37E was unusual; it has been the subject of additional restoration work this year funded by Blue Peter. It had new gates, which didn't leak!

Finally, we arrived at Lock 42E in Marsden and the summit pound - the highest canal in the UK at 645ft above sea level. At number 42, this is the last lock before the tunnel (and appropriately is the meaning of life, the universe etc...). Again, we attracted much interest from the many passers by.

A little shuttle boat ferries people back and forth between the tunnel mouth and this lock in the centre of Marston.

We had to moor up just through the lock as the shuttle boat and the "tunnel experience" trip boat were both moving about closer to the tunnel. When they finish work at about 5:00pm, we can move down and moor up right outside the tunnel.

We passed the time by walking down to the tunnel mouth where there is the Wateredge Cafe (run by the C&RT) and an exhibition centre housed in a handsome old warehouse building.

A trip boat was about to emerge from the tunnel, its two lights glowing like eyes in the darkness.

When we got back to MM, we were surprised to see that two other boats had joined us, so we will not be alone in our travel through the tunnel tomorrow.
We duly moved down to the tunnel mouth; all the day trippers had departed and the Café and exhibition centre were closed. We moored up right outside the tunnel, in fact, M was a bit spooked by seeing the tunnel mouth through the window over our bed!

We went to bed early, as we will be the first boat through in the morning and the C&RT start preparations at 7:30 and expect us to begin going through by 8:30.
Today: 1 mile, 11 locks and 3.2 hours.
Trip: 284 miles, 215 locks and 200.8 hours.