Did the girls pull the plug on The Old Bedford River??

Moored Salters Lock, Middle Levels

It was an important day here at Salters Lode.. Mrs Parker was to take her boat through the Old Bedford Sluice and enjoy a journey down the Old Bedford River to Welches Dam and beyond..  Here she is waiting for the lock to empty to drop down..

Mrs Parker had been given permission from the Environment Agency to pass through this complex today.. The last boat to pass through was back in 2004.  Narrowboats can pass through this, but the tide has to be ‘just so’ .. the tidal river has to be exactly the same state of tide as the Bedford River for it to happen, and according the Jim Shead, who was there today to record this historical occasion, that is not very often.

Once through the sluice it was full speed ahead down the extremely straight river…

Errrrrr yes but going nowhere!!  Full throttle into the sand.. They shoved, they pushed, they turned round to try make a path through the silted river.. nope! So there must have been a reason why this little boat could not go down this waterway.. after all it is a statutory navigable right of way, so it must be open to navigation!….

So Paul the lock keeper sent his children in to see what the problem was…. hey hey hey.. did the kids pulled the plug out??..

This boat is going nowhere down this river.. it is so silted there is just 4 inches of water across the width of it.. such is the amount of silt.  Apparently, once under the bridge there is a couple of metres of draft, but here there is between 3 and 4 inches!!.. Not navigable.. EA need to dredge it, after all it is a navigable waterway, or EA would not have given permission for Mrs Parker to travel.. tut tut..

There was nothing left to do but to go back through Bedford Sluice, out into the tidal River Gt Ouse and back through Salters Lock to save an evening on the mud..

Pity.. but “use it or lose it” comes to mind… there are many, many stretches of navigable waterways in this country that are threatened with closure because of lack of use.. we must all try do our bit to use navigable waterways.. it was important that Mrs Parker tried today.. the Environment Agency must act.. after all they gave her authority to use a waterway that is impossible to pass..