At their AGM in May, the Wilderness Boat Owners Club endorsed their support of the Fund British Waterways Campaign as complementing their aim of ‘Supporting Waterway Restoration’. Their biennial Club cruise emphasised the need for such change, as encounters during their planned route gave weight to the problems that navigation authorities, in this case the Environment Agency, are experiencing in attempting to eke out their limited resources.
From Whittington, on the River Wissey, the route was to take the ten trail boats to Brandon, on the Little Ouse. From here, a morning cruise was to be taken into the non-Environment Agency Santon Downham Forest section of the river (itself truncated by fallen trees that have not been cleared). However, the closure of the Brandon Lock, since earlier this year, meant that the flotilla was unable to reach Brandon itself, instead having to moor below the lock.
The reason for the closure, was that the lock had been used by the EA’s Flood Management Team during the spring flooding, earlier this year. This has led to the lock and lock stream becoming completely silted up, even too shallow for the 15-inch draft of a Wilderness Boat. The V-gates were also entirely immoveable due to the silt deposit in the lock chamber itself.
Although Brandon Lock has been one of the ‘at risk’ FBW structures throughout the year, it is unlikely the EA’s Navigation Team will have the funding to re-open it until 2025 at the earliest. More concerning is the risk that this lock will join Welches Dam and Swaffham Bulbeck locks on the list of permanently closed and lost amenities.
The itinerary also included a visit to Reach, at the end of Reach Lode. In places the reeds completely covered the channel, but all the boats managed the two-mile Roman cut to the Port, at the end. A final venue was at Denver, where there was the opportunity to see the partially cleared silt bank, below Denver Sluice Lock and the outside of Salter’s Lode lock, where the Middle Level Link was closed for several months, earlier in the year, and is again causing problems for longer boats wishing to cross the tidal section of the Great Ouse.
The Cruise highlighted the problems that the navigational authorities are having in the east of the country, and the need to “Use Them or Lose Them”, or the extremities of the system will gradually wither away. [Photos along Reach Lode, by Ivan Cane]