A Walk in South Yorkshire

 The never-ending 35mm colour slide digitisation project, which is actually within sight of an end - or at least the bottom of the box) has thrown up some photos of commercial traffic on the cut. I don't know exactly when the photos were taken - I'd guess early 1970s (so, gasp, 50 years ago!) but I do know where.

I can't remember doing it, but it looks as if one day in the said "early 70s" I must have taken a trip from Sheffield down the Sheffield & South Yorkshire Navigation at least as far as Mexborough. I wasn't on a boat - I've never boated that section - and didn't have a car, so I must have been on foot, although I suppose I might have used the odd bus or two along the way.

I started at Sheffield Basin. (Does it still look like this?)

Then walked down the Tinsley flight

and on to Rotherham, where I saw my first boat, the "Riccall"

Commercial traffic was already rare by this time and Riccall's passage of the lock appears to have attracted some interest other than my own.

Then on to Swinton and Waddington's yard...

...and on to Swinton lock, where "Sobriety" was just leaving, heading north.

Now converted for leisure/residential use, Sobriety was recently offered for sale on a brokerage website

Last call of the day and the end of the walk was Mexborough, where I came across "Richard".

I've no idea what these boats were carrying (although I suspect coal or steel might have been involved) or where they were going to or coming from but seeing three loaded commercial boats on the move in one day must have been very exciting.  The Sheffield & South Yorkshire was modernised, with bigger, mechanised locks in the 1980s but those were not good times for the steel and coal industries and by the time the work was completed the need for it had gone.