Argy bargy soon sorted!

ALL aboard . . . 90-year-old Ronnie Barnes

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AN historic trip through Britain’s longest, deepest and highest waterway nearly didn’t happen when the gates to a flight of locks on the Huddersfield Narrow canal were found to be locked!

However, a British Waterways workman arrived to open the tunnel gates and allow the narrowboat, Maria, to navigate the three and a quarter mile underground passage.

Despite the early setback, the Horseboating Society’s chairman, Sue Day, said: “It was a splendid event and, despite the snags, we managed to leg the boat through the tunnel to Marsden in two hours 47 minutes.”

The narrowboat had been towed to the tunnel’s entrance by her horse, Bilbo Baggins, and the earlier problems with the locks being fastened delayed their arrival at Diggle. Ms Day said: “We told BW six months ago when we booked the trip we would need the locks and canal tunnel gate opening at Diggle so we could continue through to Marsden.

“There seems to have been a breakdown in communications. Part of the problem is the Diggle locks are handled by a different British Waterways team from those based at Marsden who are responsible for opening the tunnel gates.”

Guest of honour on the trip was 90-year-old Ronnie Barnes from Marsden, the last remaining legger from an age when narrow boats were punted along the underground journey by teams of men in hob-nailed boots.

He was accompanied by his wife Sheila, 87, and her niece Michelle Seed, who, with Ms Day, dressed in Victorian costume, helped leg the boat on its journey.

Ronnie, a three-time escapee from German prisoner of war camps, was a one-time canal employee and legged the tunnel on a maintenance barge.

He quipped: “If someone had given me a hairpin I could have easily have picked the lock and opened the gates.

“As it was, the delay gave us chance to tell onlookers who had come to witness the event about my life underground on the canal.”