St Pancras Lock Open Weekend

If you arrive on a cold, February morning, Granary Square steams as the fountains power up. The mist they produce is thick enough to hide people in. If you want to do 'creatures emerging from the mist' shots for anything, I'd recommend it.

Misty Moisty Granary Square

I arrived a little bit early to help prepare Jena for the day. Mostly this involved re-arranging tables and mopping up muddy wet footprints from her deck. Saturday morning was wet.

Then we trogged along the pontoon towpath and over the temporary bridge past the lock to Gas Holder park, where a number of gazebos had been set up for stall for CRT information and merchandise. After a short briefing and allocation of roles (I was to be marshal for Jena) we picked up our black hi-vis tabards and branded wooly hats.

Chunks of history lock gate.

One of the things being sold are chunks of the lower gates from Kentish Road lock - well-aged oak, laser branded with the CRT logo. Very nice, if you like a bit of canalia with character.

'Compass' signage at York Road steps.

Less popular, with some people, are the 'compass' signage installed at Kings Cross. These signs give an estimate of the time it takes to walk or cycle one spot on the towpath to the next. Unfortunately, some people think that these might represent targets to beat for cyclists. The times given are actually quite generous, approximating to 10kph for cycling, which I don't feel is too fast an average pace.

I spent most of Saturday on Jena. Despite the wet weather the activity aboard (building and decorating CRT branded bird boxes) was incredibly popular with the kids. A few times we had to restrict people from coming aboard as we reached Jena's safe capacity. That day we had over 250 visitors to Jena alone. For the entire event that day we counted over 2000!

Sunday was dryer, but colder.

Jena, but not where I expected.

I arrived even earlier to set up Jena, to be slightly bamboozled to find her the other side of the canal from where we'd left her. It turned out that in the early evening, after the event had wound up for the day, someone stepped into the gap between Jena and the towpath. We'd moored her at a slightly awkward angle to make it easier for the public to use Jena's access ramp - and we'd left quite a space between her stern and bows by the towpath. That wasn't a problem in the daytime, but after dark the space could be mistaken for a patch of grass. So, once the person had been safely extracted from the canal, Jena had been gently pushed across to the (non-public) offside and pinned up there.

I spent a couple of minutes with Tom Oliver, just gently poling her back into position for the daytime.

My viewpoint for the morning.

The Water Tower

Pride of Slough

This day I'd been allocated a different task - marshalling people across from St. Pancras Lock, down some unevenly spaced steps, and towards the water tower at St Pancras Cruising Club.

This gave me time to gaze into the lock and listen to the engineered music derived from hydrophone recordings of the lock being emptied and refilled - a sort of haunting noise reminiscent of whale-song.  I also practised a half dozen different ways of saying "Hello, this way to the water Tower - please be careful of the uneven steps as you go down." So I didn't sound entirely like a broken record.

Famous on YouTube!

Visitor numbers were a little down from Saturday it seemed like the cold was deterring some people, but it didn't prevent a few Youtube VIPs from making their way into the lock to visit: ladies and gentleman, I give you Tom Scott, Chris Joel, Gary Brannan and the lovely Matt Gray - the Technical Difficulties!

2 days, 12 hours.