WATER SHEPHERD

My water shepherd  lives on a boat constantly cruising the midlands but she is currently engaged on a zero hours contract as a 'Water Operative'.  We both had a giggle at the job title.  I gather from the work she does that she would have been a Lengthsman in the old days but when did the Canal&River Trust ever call a manual agricultural soil manipulating tool a spade?

She happens to be a friend of mine and a serious off-gridder in real life.  But in the new normal as a Zero Hours Water Oerative ... one of her current duties is to manage water levels at Braunston Summit and be particularly observant during forecasted prolonged rain of which we have had a surfeit recently.   The canal system has considerable facilities for ensuring there is enough water for boats to navigate and also enough to flood the surrounding countryside if it should get out of hand. 

DIGRESSION  is the ability to veer to the route less traveled ...  

Many years ago, Braunston Summit breached itself just west of Norton Junction and emptied its contents into the adjacent countryside. It took its water from between Braunston Top Lock and Buckby Top Lock via the tunnel and including the two-mile leg of the Leicester Arm from Norton Junction to the Watford Stairs and dispatched it on a one-way ticket to the townland of Norton which lay below the breach.

The pound of Braunston is enclosed by three locks and its linear length is about six miles. The average depth is about four feet and its average width about forty feet and when the length of the pound is multiplied by the width of the pound and the depth of the pound, LxWxD = the result is a volume of water which can be measured in gallons or cubic metres or units of Olympic swimming pools (An Olympic pool holds about 660,000 gallons which is just about enough to supply all of London's boaters for a month).

WIP at  redefined satellite mixes on Sun 17th Dec

Stay tuned while I get photos and assemble the historical evidence