In April I wrote that I'd come back to the locks, and on 11 August I did. Right trainer, grey, laces tied, sat in the bywash channel at Lock 32E on the Marsden flight, the channel being dry at that time of year. Warm and still.
A boat come through while I were taking the photographs, and the man at the tiller nodded at me, and I nodded back, and that were the whole of it. The notebook records the nod. I've thought about that man now and again — he'll have taken me for a photographer of locks, which is a reasonable trade to be mistaken for. The bywash had a bit of growth in it, being dry, and the trainer sat in among it neat as you like.
Four photographs, three come out. Flask conditions good. The note ends 'the locks are proving reliable', and eight years on I can report that they never stopped. Two lock shoes in one season told me the canal weren't a fluke, and the Huddersfield Narrow has been on the rota ever since. A bywash is a curious presenting spot — below path level, so you only find it if you look down over the edge, which I always do. That's not luck. That's method.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.