Bartimaeus

Going round the Victorian prison and hearing of their grim living conditions was interesting, but that was actually one of the more lenient punishments, indeed it was deemed a rehabilitation. A much worse fate was transportation which was always a lengthy sentence and of course capital punishment was still common, and indeed popular as an entertainment. Eventually they decided public hangings attracting crowds of thousands were in bad taste. The prison museum is of course a modern entertainment / education for children. There were activities to act out, like doing laundry and picking oakum. In one room was a jigsaw of a notice. Beside the pieces there was a picture of a dog but you were encouraged to complete the puzzle to find out what was on the rest of the notice. In the absence of any children I gave it a go.

I don’t know if this was an excerpt from a magazine. Someone went to the effort of framing the article artistically with keys and chains. While public hangings ended, executions at the castle still took place, and of course still do in many countries.

From the claustrophobic atmosphere of the prison cells we went to the airiness of the castle walls. They are extensive and involved a lot of steps, some quite narrow.

From up there we got a good view of the dragons belching smoke and then went all the way down to the dungeons. The court is still in the castle and while we were there police and a secure vehicle arrived. It was the end of the court day and someone was being escorted away from court, it won’t be to a dungeon cell like the ones here.

Dungeons and dragons is a very popular game with our sons, I hadn’t expected to see them in Lincoln. The dragons had been meant to be temporary but apparently there is no plan to remove them. They roar and are visible without a ticket.

We had made the best of a cold wet day. The next day we popped into town to send a post card, buy bread and stock up from the fruit and veg market stall. I even managed to get buttons for my current knitting project on the way. It was good Shane hadn’t gone to buy bread while I was getting buttons I needed to pop out and get cash for the stall. He clocked that the fruit and veg stall took cards before he went to get the bread. He had gone with the rucksack though so I had to get a plastic bag.

Leaving Lincoln we went under a bridge we had seen from a distance in our walks to town. We knew it hosted a steampunk festival and that is depicted on one side. Approaching and leaving the bridge you are asked where are you going? and where have you been?

People on their trip boat remarked on our stealth mode, driving in electric. We passed under the dramatic figures that made me think they were angels but that may not be what the artist intended.

Shane knew there was a lock before we left the city, but it looked very odd on approach. Someone was winding and I couldn’t tell if the winding handles were attached or if he was using his own windlass. There was a boat in but I was confused by the lack of lock gates. Then Shane told me it was a guillotine lock. I don’t think it is just the scary name, but it did actually look ominous. It looked like you could tip down into it. The yellow circles are there to warn you not to proceed but are not a very traditional stop warning system.

The man working it was very familiar with it and chatted me through it.The gate at the far end was not a guillotine and was manually operated. Shane came to investigate. The guillotine gate was operated by push buttons. Once the other boat had left Shane started to operate it. I felt uneasy about the boat driving under a guillotine and even if Shane trusted the mechanism, he made a dash to avoid the drips from the wet gate landing on him. I am glad these are rare. A wet drip down the back of the neck isn’t the worst outcome of going under a guillotine!

I operated the gate closing once he was in. I hope that mechanism has a failsafe. Admittedly it seemed to only work while you held the button down. Normally there is an emergency stop button on the panel you are operating, but in this case it was hidden round the side of the panel with an arrow to it rather than clearly displayed at the front.

Having left Lincoln behind we were lucky to have found a mooring space just before the rain. Plenty of boats were there but on permanent moorings. In the morning I looked out the window and all I saw moving was a clump of reeds.

We were starting with a lock and a turn. Shane wanted to work the lock as he hadn’t done one for a while. Actually most of the locks were not operated by either of us at all lately, or have just been a button press. I had only done half of the last lock. This lock has a lot of rushes in it, probably including the clump I had seen. We must be rusty at the locks as neither of us noticed for a while that the person who had left a gate open had also left the paddle open so that was why it was taking too long to empty.

That was the boating excitement done for the day. There is very little traffic on the River Witham. The next stretch is quite long without much sign of human life, apart from the occasional angler and hardly any boats moving, but there are little jetties to stop at, on the way. We did find that sometimes they are already full, or at least there isn’t space for a boat our size in the gaps. The distant view is blocked by high banks each side. There is an occasional station house, but the railway has gone.

We have still enjoyed glimpses of grebes, terns, swallows, cormorants and swifts. There have been larger groups of swans than usual too. We found a space to moor, opposite some cows, on a steep slope.

When we moored for the evening, we were hopeful of exploring the village and finding the cleverly named eatery, Witham and Blues, but there was no sign of it. In its place was a cafe, advertising itself as for people bringing dogs, which was closed. The one other cafe, with a steam train theme, was also closed. Just as well I stocked up at the market stall. The Witham and Blues restaurant had gone two years ago.