A coincidence indeed

Reading the latest amputation of the system reminded me of the time in 2005, writes Roger Spurr.

In the British Waterways days self and Irene hired a very nice boat from Silsden with the intent of navigating west to the famous Burnley Embankment.

Lack of water

Regrettably on taking the tiller we found that at Gargrave the locks were, well, locked!  Lack of water was the excuse and so we winded and spent the week going east in a very shallow cut, but at least got the Five Rise rise off the bucket list.

Two years later we visited Scotland and the Crinan Canal by car and retired one evening to the Crinan hotel bar.  A young man was sitting at one end and we engaged him in conversation which soon turned to the subject of canals.  We rambled on then had a bit of a rant about the problems we had encountered on the Leeds & Liverpool costing us a lot of money and some disappointment.

'My fault'

The man looked embarrassed and then said. 'Ah that would be my fault, sorry.'

Turns out he was the engineer on the L&L at the time, moving recently to Scotland to look after the Crinan, indeed next day we spotted him inspecting the locks from a dinghy by which time we had forgiven him over a tot or two!