Tinsley Flight

Yesterday I had a bit of exercise and a fix of boating pleasure by working a boat down the tinsley flight and then another one back up. A sort of freelance volunteer!

One boater was a single handing stranger, who was making his way up to Leeds and was hoping to be in Doncaster by the end of the day. The other was a boater returning back to the marina and was also single handing the boat. 

The canal around Tinsley has some graffiti in places and some murals. Here is a mural that has been vandalised with graffiti! So don't look too close, it looks much better from a distance. The building with the mural is by the way the pump house that provides water into the canal from the nearby River Don. 

The Tinsley flight is what's called an accompanied flight of locks. This does not mean that the lock keeper will do all the locking for you. What he will do is remove and replace afterwards the special anti vandal locks so that you can operate the lock. In reality, the lockies tend to set the locks either filling or draining as they remove the anti vandal locks. There are one or two locks on the flight that have quite heavy gates due to short balance beams. The lockies will usually lend a shoulder on the more difficult ones.

Good use of resources.

One of the locks on the flight (5) has been earmarked for a full set of replacement gates, in the autumn. Though there are several other sets of gates nearby that seem to be in a similar state of wear and tear. Now it might be me, but you like me might think that bringing in the heavy lifting gear which will be a challenge in itself on this section.  To have replaced more than one set of locks gates might have been a better use of the time, costs and resources. Better still if some or all of the other locks had been targeted for repair or replacement.

Bandit country.

The Tinsley flight is located very close to the Meadowhall Shopping Complex. Half way up the flight there is a lock landing that has been updated. It is the closest point that you can moor up for the meadowhall complex. The use of anti-vandal locks should be a clue that this part of the canal is bandit country. No one in their right mind would stop and leave their boat unattended at this point.

The towpath has street lighting at this point. The lighting stands can be folded down by the removal of a securing bolt.

The existing street lights have been replaced or paired by the new LED folding lighting stands. The local vandals have already figured out how to remove the securing bolt.








This allows the LED lighting to come crashing down. This smashes the lighting head unit.

Later....