Dodging the Rain and the Summit Pound at Last.

 Monday 16th May 2022 near Colne.

An early start to try to beat the weather and get some (more) shopping done before the rain. The morning was misty as we cruised along Burnley's famous canal embankment, built 60' above the town and 0.75 miles long, affording a bird's eye view across the town, even on a damp, misty morning.

One advantage of being high up on the embankment is that you look down into the shared back yards of the typical back to back terraces of houses.

This huge mill has been entirely converted to very nice looking apartments. It just shows what can be done to find new uses for these massive buildings.

A very rare sight these days, a gasometer! An endangered species, in fact! This mill has been converted into a shopping centre.

If you have a very tall chimney, it makes an ideal billboard that can be seen for miles.

M wanted to do some shopping at Sainsburys on the north of town. Unfortunately it was impossible to get very close to the side of the canal to moor. However, R managed to jump ashore and returned bearing wine!

Meanwhile, M saw in the guide books that Morrisons at Nelson, a few miles further on, had its own dedicated mooring for boaters, so we decided to head for that. The mooring looked excellent with bollards to tie up to. However, it had started to rain when we left Burnley and the rain was now falling heavily.

There is a gate between the mooring and the supermarket; to our initial frustration, we found it locked. R, using his initiative, found that he could unlock it with the "Anti-vandal" key, so M was able to get most of the shopping that she needed. Meanwhile, R. went for a coffee in the supermarket's cafe!

By this time the rain had more or less eased off and, as there was no more forecast until the evening, we decided to keep going and get through the last seven Barrowford locks up to the summit pound.

Every lock was against us but, as they are very close together, R was able to walk up to set the next lock as each lock was filling.

The paddle gear on these locks is strange with vertical ground paddles and gate paddles that are so high that a step is needed to be able to reach them - jolly handy in M's case, as she is a mere 5'2"!

Barrowford Reservoir, next to the locks, is undergoing a two year programme to strengthen it and reduce its depth following safety concerns. Currently, it is completely empty, a strange sight as we recall it being full of water when we last came this way. M scaled the adjacent spoil heap to take the photo below!  It was pleasing to see that what had once been a slag heap was now carpeted with soft, luxuriant grass and a mass of hawthorn in full bloom.  It's wonderful to see how Nature reclaims, given time.

To be fair, this is an old notice, but ALL of the lock gates were leaking badly. As with the Wigan flight, it would be easier to report those gates that were NOT leaking! If we had listed every single leaking lock since we started in 2011, we would still be writing the list now!

At the top of the flight, there are very pleasant moorings overlooking truly beautiful countryside.  We moored up for the night before the threatened thunderstorms arrived. We just managed to wash down the roof and the well deck before the rain arrived again.

Happily, the weather tomorrow is forecast to be sunny and bright as we make our way along the summit pound and through the Foulridge Tunnel.

Today: 7 miles, 7 locks and 3.4 hours.

Trip: 135 miles, 88 locks and 64.4 hours.