Visiting Sheffield and coming down again

This posting covers our three days in Sheffield and then the descent of the Tinsley Locks in much better weather than we went up them, so some blue sky pictures for a change.

Sheffield Cathedral is well worth a visit and we particularly liked the steel nativity and steel is such an appropriate material for the city.

It even has some roof angels.  We saw these when we were on the Middle Levels last year in churches at March and nearby towns.

The Cathedral has some modern parts but they blend in so well with the old.  One new addition is this lantern tower as you come into the church.

The Peace Garden behind the Town Hall is delightful with its water features.

And the Winter Gardens is a fine mix of botanical hothouse and social space with artworks, cafes and restaurants.

We were intrigued by these road works which have revealed old tram rails buried under the tarmac.  Of course Sheffield has now come full circle with a network of modern trams which are convenient, frequent and even accept bus passes for old folk like Ian.

The Lyceum Theatre has been repainted since we last came and we took advantage of our stay in the city to go to a production of "The Girl on the Train" which was excellent. We nearly leapt off seats with the clever effects towards the end.

We met our friends Nick and Wendy for lunch on Wednesday and walked with them to the Botanical Gardens.  The highlights here were a fossilised Clubmoss Tree and this Bear Pit.  It was built as entertainment for the Victorian visitors but it can't have been much fun for the bear kept in the bottom of this uninviting hole.  The present bear is bronze so no threat to these visitors.

But Helen still tried to make him feel better after the ill treatment of his forbears.

We visited Kelham Island Museum which had some fascinating exhibits from Sheffield's industrial past.  This painting is of the Sheaf Works which happens to be exactly where we moored Leo while in Sheffield.  Leo was moored about where the left hand vessel is shown.

Kelham Island has the River Don Steam Engine which is possibly the largest working steam engine in the UK and perhaps the world.  It is 12,000 hp and to see it running as it does once a day was wonderful.  The flywheel alone weighs 51 tons and the machine can change direction of rotation almost instantly.  The power is astonishing with remarkably little noise and vibration.

This picture on the side of a building is near the canal basin and is of a steelworker.  It is not painted but is made out of different coloured bricks.

After three nights in the basin we came back down the Tinsley Locks on Friday (28th June).  There are a level couple of miles before you reach the Top Lock.  On the way we passed a mooring decorated with skeletons.

I think these two are playing cards or studying Nicholson's Waterways Guide to decide where to go tomorrow.

Here we are crossing the Worksop Road Aqueduct  known locally as "T'Acky Dock".

This ornate footbridge looks as if it might be a really old wrought iron one.  In fact it is modern.  It is good to see that we can still make things which are beautiful as well as functional.

Here we are sharing a lock with Braggabout on the way down.

And here we are leaving the bottom lock of the Tinsley flight.  The bridge over the River Don which we joined here is called the Halfpenny Bridge.

Cycling towards us on the towpath is Derek, our CRT assistant, who helped us through the locks and locked up after us. 

Two locks below the flight is Holmes Lock which is the last one for which boaters have to book and be accompanied through.  Here we are leaving Holmes Lock and we are now on our own heading towards Rotherham.

We have seen kingfishers including one on the level section of canal approaching Sheffield.  But in case you miss them there is a mural of kingfishers approaching Ickles Lock.

Below Ickles the passage of the boats stirred up bubbles of gas from the canal.  We wondered what is fermenting down there.

 In the winter we volunteer every couple of weeks at Naburn Lock on the Yorkshire Ouse.  Coming down the Tinsley flight we met Anthony who organises the volunteers at Naburn.  At Rotherham Lock we also met Lucy who does similar work.  It was good to see them both.

This is the oil terminal in Rotherham to which still has deliveries by barge along the canal.  Each barge is 61m long, 6m wide and has a draft of 2.4m.  They come in from Rotterdam via the Humber and Goole.  We have not met one yet but we have met a boat whose back rope was snapped by the suction from one passing.  The advice is not to moor on pins round here!

Having come down the locks from Sheffield we stopped once again at Eastwood and caught the tram into Rotherham in the afternoon.  Rotherham is one of four places in the UK that has a chantry chapel on its river bridge.  You can visit all of them by boat.  The others are Wakefield, St. Ives Cambridgeshire, and Bradford on Avon.

We visited Rotherham Minster.

In the Minster there is a memorial to 50 people, mostly young lads, who perished in a disaster on the canal.  In 1841 a vessel was launched down a slipway into the canal.  The custom was that the local lads used to ride the boat down the slipway but this time the vessel turned turtle and so many young lives were lost.  We spoke to the verger who has written a book on the subject of the disaster.  What a sad story.

In many of the locks here the steel piling is covered with tiny mussels which squirt water as the level drops.  This is difficult to take a picture of but you can just make out a water jet in the left middle of this photo.

On Saturday temperatures of 31 degrees were forecast, so we found a shady mooring just below Mexborough Top Lock.  Now our solar panel has broken we don't need to seek the sun.

The man living in the old lock cottage is a creative metalworker. We liked this dragon over the porch.

Coming down the river today we managed to spot Conisbrough Castle through the trees.

And here we are turning onto the lock cut at Sprotbrough where we are moored tonight (Sunday 30th).  This afternoon we have had a good walk around Sprotbrough Flash, a lake caused by mine subsidence which is now a bird reserve.

Tomorrow we will press on to Doncaster where Martin and Sue our new friends on Braggabout have been encouraging us to visit the market and especially the fish market.  After that we will be setting our sights on York and Ripon via Selby.