THURSDAY.
The 2008 journey thus far: 235 Locks & 337 Miles & 29 Swing\Lift Bridges
Journeys using bus pass: 14
Today, we made up for our failure to ride on the North Yorks Moors Railway at Pickering by travelling on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway. We took the bus (naturally) to Keighley and arrived in plenty of time for the 11.35 departure to Oxenhope. We arrived almost 30 minutes late at Haworth, this resulted in a shorter wander around the town after I had taken photos of the engines on shed. We caught the 2.03pm to Oxenhope and as it was raining heavily, remained on board whilst the Ivatt 2-6-2 tank 41241 ran around the train. We were allowed 20 minutes at Oakworth to look around the station and chatted to a man who worked for the Northern Lighthouse board; he had worked in some beautiful and very exposed places during that time. We returned to Keighley and took the bus back to the canal.
After supper, I was taking a telephone call when a large pair of eyes looked at me through the window. The heifers had got out of the field below the canal. One had horns, so Myra went to shoo them away from our nice new paint job. They wandered off and a few minutes later, we heard a splash and saw waves across the canal. Yes – one of the heifers had fallen in, between our boat and the one moored behind us. It was pouring with rain, I put on my waterproofs and removed our centre mooring rope from the boat. The man on the boat behind us was telephoning the Fire brigade as I arrived with the rope. The heifer had swum around his boat and was heading for the swing bridge and the top gate. As she arrived and was stuck by the ground paddle, I managed to get the rope around her head and turn her back to the shallower water. She swum back to the edge near the boats and I managed to get the rope around her head and a turn around a bollard, so she was standing in the canal and not going anywhere. She was a bit shaken, but seemed to be calming down when she shook her head, backed up and neatly turned around. The fire brigade arrived and as they took hold of the rope, she began swimming back to the swing bridge. She went along between a BW wide boat and the towpath getting stuck for a while before she pushed and got away from the rope. Under the bridge she went before a fireman got the rope around her head and pulled her to the concrete by the bridge. She got her front legs onto the concrete and was pulled out by the firemen and laid on her side resting. She had a few cuts to her legs, but hopefully they would be checked by the vet that had been called out by the fire brigade. They were deciding how to get her up the two big ledges to the road when she stood up and climbed them herself before being led back to her field and the rope untied. Most of the rest of the heifers had gone down the towpath past the 5 and the 3 rise and arrived being driven back by a jogger as the firemen were replacing the pieces of the jigsaw of pallets that had been unsuccessfully masquerading as a gate. All the beasts were put back in the field just as the BW emergency team, in the form of the Dowley Gap lockie arrived.
Showers, some very heavy, a few bright intervals.
