Friday 31 July 2009

York to Selby ( via Tidal Ouse )

We spent the morning looking around York again ( including M & S ) and went back to the boat for lunch. The trip boats plodding up and down the river every few minutes all giving the same commentary, apparently before the great fire of London houses in York were built without foundations so you could turn them upside down and still use them!!

Lunch brought about a small panic as Bob tried to cut his thumb off with the bread knife, but it turned out to be more shock than blood.

The daytime tide today meant that we had to be at Naburn Lock ready to go down about 4.30pm, to arrive at Selby about 7pm. Five narrowboats went down in the first penning and we were first out onto the river. We were soon overtaken by two narrowboats, one steered by a grandmother and her grandson, who were out to break records! The other two boats were much slower.

After about an hour and a half we realised we were catching up rapidly on the first two boats, they had slowed considerably and it was soon obvious that the first had a problem. We all came to a virtual stand still, then an enormous lump of wood floated away from the bows of the first boat. They had been pushing it for sometime hence the reduced speed.

Selby lock is only big enough for two narrowboats at a time so after radioing the lock to let him know we were ten minutes away we trod water for 15 minutes to let the two boats ahead get through the awkward bridges and make their turn into the lock.

Our turn eventually came and the turn into the lock was quite staight forward ( didn't even touch the lock walls on entering). We then had to wait about 15 mins for the arrival of the next boat to lock up with us.