We went by the locks, plenty water there and saw a pair of boats going through. Both were lone boaters. We decided to help them with the gates and went over to let them know. The woman, Shane noticed, was wearing a jacket with the words East Coast Organics on it. This was the company from which we used to get a regular delivery of a box of fruit and vegetables until we started boating. Shane couldn’t help commenting. She used to work there and he noticed she had a John Muir Trust sign on one of her plant pots too. She revealed she was from Dunbar and had only been on the boat for two or three months, a brave undertaking to start lone boating, inexperienced in the middle of winter. She climbed down the ladder into the boat and we went to close the gates. They were very heavy gates and I made very slow progress, closing my side, while on Shane’s side, he was struggling to move it at all. I remembered trying this lock before and it being very hard work with people watching from the nearby pub. I shouted to Shane that I thought I had had to go to the very extreme end of the gate, beyond the handle, to get enough leverage to close it. That seemed to work but they were a reluctant pair.