Thursday 13th July

Pollington to Keadby

Woken up today at 7am by a fully laden barge going upstream from Goole. Got ready to set off in case another leisure boat appeared going down. We knew from a boater in the Bay Horse that there was one moored at Great Heck.

A narrowboat appeared and was given a green light by the lock keeper. We quickly got going ready to follow them in, but had the gates shut in our face. This was because another barge was coming upstream. After this had come through, the lock keeper let us through and then put the lock back to self operation.

Turned off the Aire and Calder onto the New Juction canal. We were surprised to find that Sykhouse lock was manned, and he set the lock for us. He told that a tanker from Doncaster was due, bound for Goole. Sure enough we crossed the tanker before the next lift bridge.

At Top Lane lift bridge the narrow boat that had been one mile ahead of us since the incident first thing, waited for us. We were then able to operate the next swing bridge for them.

Turned east onto the Stainforth and Keadby canal at Bramwith Junction.

Moored outside the canalside pub at Stainforth. Although they were doing food they do not have real ale, so we carried on to Thorne.

In Thorne we went to the Punch Bowl Inn where we had a dodgy pint of Old Mill Bitter and a starter off the specials board.

On the way back we popped into the Canal Tavern. Although this is no longer in the GBG, we had a very good pint of Adnams Broadside.

The new swing footbridge there is already playing up. On the advice of locals we had to reopen it slightly, then close it again, before the gates could be opened.

The next lift bridge was having its rams replaced, but this was more of a problem to road users, as they had the road blocked off for the day. We were only held up while they moved their workboat out of the way.

When we arrived at Vazon rail bridge I was surprised that the signalman came down to meet us. This was because he had bad new. Due to the heat sometimes the bridge doesn't close and they have to have an engineer there in case it doesn't.

Initially we were told that it would be an hour but it was over two hours, during which time two other boats had arrived. We eventualy got through at 8.30, just in time to get to the Auld Yorkshire before they stopped serving food at 9pm. However when we got there it was closed.

We the tried the the Barge. They had stopped doing food at 7.30 but they did show us menus from two takeaways in Scunthorpe that would deliver there. We chose the Chinese and had a pint of Pedigree while we waited.

We took the takeaway back to the boat. It wasn't very good but we shared a large bottle of white Chimay afterwards, and that was.