Coming events

Slea Boat Gathering and Village Celebrations

Our annual boat gathering on the Slea will be held in South Kyme over the weekend of 30th April - 2nd May 2011. The village celebrations this year will, apparently, include not only the annual scarecrow contest but also a Medieval Fair and Hog Roast. It should be a great event! Contact Steve Hayes for details at either sleaford.navigation@ntlworld.com or phone 01522 689460.

Lincolnshire Branch IWA are promoting a couple of events on new and little used waterway in the county.

Black Sluice Navigation Cruise

This event will be held over the weekend of 13th - 15th May 2011. Take this opportunity to cruise on the areas newest restored navigation, reopened in 2009 after nearly 50 years of being inaccessible to boats. For this weekend a special licence, discounted to £5.00 has been negotiated.
Contact Dave Carnell for details, phone 01469 530138

The Witham Navigable Drains

Explore this under used and fascinating system of navigable drains in the Boston area. They were originally built for drainage but were later improved by the engineer John Rennie for use as a transport system for agricultural cargos into Boston and beyond and also importing coal to the area.
Have the chance to explore the system with a group of local boaters over the late May Bank Holiday weekend, 28th - 30th May 2011. Boldly go where few boats have ventured before and have the satisfaction of hearing people say 'we don't often see boats up here'!
Contact Dave Carnell for details, phone 01469 530138

Chesterfield Canal Festival

Over the week end of 17th & 18th of July the Trust and Lincolnshire Waterways Partnership attended the Chesterfield Canal Festival in Worksop. Despite the weather which, at times, was poor a good crowd turned out. Certainly the car park always looked fairly full.

The sales stall with Pat in charge, as usual, did very well over the two days.

Head of Navigation Opening Celebrations

The 3^rd of July saw the Trust celebrate the culmination of 5 years work with the opening of the new bridge and slipway in Sleaford.

The slipway was formally opened with speeches and the cutting of a ribbon by Lincolnshire County Councilor Eddie Poll and Chris Hayes Trust Chairman. John Lower’s boat ‘Schandelle’ was then launched with due ceremony down the slipway. Eddie Poll and Dave Pullen, the Trust Hon Engineer, then set off for an inaugural trip down to Cogglesford Lock. This also involved raising the lift bridge, not only for ‘Schandelle’ but also for a small flotilla of canoes.

A great many people in Sleaford visit the celebrations during the day and were extremely complementary about the works.

After a period of 'tweaking' and refining the design of the bridge, the hydraulic operating gear was fitted last week. On Friday a small party went over to try out the bridge and to see how it operated. Operation by windlass was quite easy although the bridge was slightly harder to raise than to lower. This situation we understand will be remedied by the addition of a small extra counter weight.

In all the bridge was raised and lowered three times. The photo shows the Chairman, Chris Hayes, exercising her prerogative and windlass!

December Work Party

The December work party was very well attended with quite a few new people there which is always good. One of the tasks was to replace the wooden fencing at Cogglesford Lock in Sleaford. Some local undesirables had stolen a scooter a month or two ago, lent it against the fence and set fire to it! This didn’t do the fence much good and made a mess of the scooter! Maybe one thing to be slightly grateful for was the fact that they didn’t then kick the remains into the lock. It would certainly have been more difficult to remove from there. The fence is now restored and probably more firmly installed than before because it was concreted in this time. There was also some remedial pointing to brickwork on the bridge so things look better overall.

Another group went off the Haverholme Lock to do a general sort out of vegetation and tidy up. Amazingly for December the weather was kind and the rain held off until everything was packed up. On days like that work parties are almost promotional events as there are usually any number of walkers stopping to chat and ask what’s going on.

November Work Party

The November work party saw the final touches put to the works at Bottom Lock. Ever since last year it had been our intention to install quadrants to make pushing the gates easier and, incidentally, to improve the overall appearance of the lock.

A great deal of the work had been completed during the October work party. The quadrant on the Lock Island had been finished. This comprised of marking and digging out the area for the hardcore followed by mixing and laying the concrete. The final task was to set some cobbles into the concrete to push against when opening the gate. The second quadrant was also dug out in October but a lack of materials curtailed further work.

A small, but select, group assembled at Bottom Lock on the Sunday morning in November and got all the equipment and materials into the right place. This involved moving everything over the sluices, the lock island and the bridge over the lock! After the preparation work in October all that remained was to mix a large quantity of concrete to fill in the excavated area and then carefully set in the cobbles at regular intervals. Sounds simple but it did involve a lot of barrowing!

We had lunch in unseasonably warm weather, it’s not often you can sit out in t-shirts in November! The site was tidied up and we then went to Cogglesford Lock to assess the jobs for the December work party.

Steve Hayes

Sleaford Sports Partnership Fun Day, Sunday 13th September

On the Sunday morning I went to pick up the trailer with all the gear in from storage and drove over to Sleaford Rugby Club. When I arrived I found that it was a lot windier than I had first thought and, although I got the large gazebo frame out of the trailer and its roof in place I decided that it would be a risky operation to go any further. Jenny Osbourne arrived shortly after and after enlisting help from some nearby RAF personnel we expanded the roof out to full stretch. Bearing in mind the wind, we were also very careful to attach the heavy duty guy ropes, it’s a large bit of canvas and I had visions of it being lifted off with us clinging to it floating towards Sleaford.

Despite trying to summon help from members of the work party at Cobblers (why is reception on mobiles awful when you have a real problem?) we made little real progress until Pat Taylor and Ellie Sowerby arrived with the stock. We had to use all the pegs to fasten down the walls of one gazebo that we would have normally used on both of them. Better safe than sorry!

The event proved popular with a steady stream of visitors to the stall and a great deal of support and interest was shown in the work of the Trust and in our current and future projects.

Thanks to all who helped in whatever capacity. It was good to be able to support a Sports Partnership event because on previous occasions dates have clashed and made our involvement very difficult.

Steve Hayes