Sonning and the Lock

Here is another one of Polar's stories about when I first became a Boat Bear. 

As you will see, I knew very little about boats and how they move around the waterways back then.  I am a much wiser small bear now!

Sonning and the Lock

Sonning was inside the boat, sitting on a cushion, waiting to find out what a lock was.  There were lots of things the little bear still didn’t understand.  He didn’t know the boat people’s names, so he had given them bear names – ‘Polar’ for the big lady with white hair and ‘Grizzly’ for the brown-haired man.  He didn’t know what a lock was either.  Polar had said the locks on the Thames were ‘intimidating’ and, as she was a very big human, Sonning thought a lock must some sort of monster.

Sonning heard the noise from the boat change and noticed the trees and fields weren’t going by so quickly.  The river forked, passing to either side of a little island.  A small blue sign on a post pointed the way to the lock.

‘I wonder why Polar and Grizzly don’t turn left and avoid the lock, if it’s so frightening,’ Sonning thought.  ‘That’s what I would do!’  He looked wistfully along what he thought was the safer channel until he saw a big red and white notice sticking up out of the water.

Danger!  Weir! it said.

‘Oh no!’ gasped Sonning.  ‘Whatever a weir is, it must be an even fiercer monster than a lock.  That must be why we’re going the other way.’

Both routes seemed to lead to monsters of some sort.  The little bear trembled with fear.  He hoped Polar and Grizzly had chosen the right channel. 

Sonning saw land close to the boat now.  It was very level, hard-looking land with gigantic black mushrooms growing at regular intervals along the edge.  Sonning saw a pair of feet in big boots walking beside the boat, then someone bent down to loop a rope around one of the mushrooms.  It was Polar.  The boat came to a halt beside the hard, grey path.  A few seconds later, he saw Grizzly walk by.

‘I’m all alone on the boat!’ he cried.  ‘I hope Polar and Grizzly don’t think I can fight the lock monster on my own!’

He saw another sign on a fence beside a pretty house, close to the boat.  ‘Lock-keeper on duty,’ he read.  ‘Well, that’s a relief.  If there’s a lock-keeper, hopefully the lock will be in a cage or on a lead, so it can’t bite or scratch us.’

Grizzly was talking to a man by the house.  Sonning saw Polar’s big feet passing the window again, then the boat moved forward, passing more giant mushrooms and a very big gate.

‘The lock must be shut in behind that,’ said Sonning, studying it carefully.  ‘Now we’ve gone past the lock-keeper and the gate, we must be safe.’  

When Grizzly stepped back onto the boat, he expected them to set off down the river again.  To Sonning’s horror, the engine stopped.

‘Why aren’t we getting away from the lock monster as quickly as we can?’ he asked Grizzly, when the man came through the cabin and went out to the front of the boat.  Grizzly didn’t seem to hear him.  He was busy, looping the front rope around one of the mushrooms.

‘The lock monster must have escaped!’ cried Sonning.  ‘I wonder if Polar and Grizzly have to help the lock-keeper catch it again?’

There were other people coming to help, on other boats.  Sonning could see the glossy wooden hull of a boat quite different to Uplander II from the window on the opposite side of the cabin and his keen little ears could hear other boat noises, which stopped as the boats gathered together.

‘It must take a whole army of people to recapture a lock monster!’ he said to himself.  ‘I hope nobody gets hurt, especially my new friends.  I don’t think I can watch!’  

Sonning cowered down on his cushion and covered his little black eyes with his paws.  He felt quite poorly, as if he were sinking downwards.  When he uncovered his eyes, it was quite dark in the boat but he could just see a slimy, wet wall through the window.  Sonning gave a small squeal of terror.

‘Uplander’s been eaten by the lock monster!’ he cried, reasoning that the slippery surface outside must be the inside of a huge creature’s throat or stomach.  ‘How will we ever escape?’

As his eyes go used to the dark, Sonning saw Grizzly at the front of the boat, calmly holding the rope.

‘Maybe the lock-keeper can pull us out?’ he thought.  ‘Or, if he feeds the lock monster those giant mushrooms instead, perhaps it will spit out the boats?  I would rather eat big, tasty mushrooms than wood and metal – but that might just be because I’m a small bear, not a huge, scary monster.’

Suddenly, there was a familiar rumbling noise and Sonning realised that Uplander II was making a noise again.  He heard an unfamiliar clanking and grumbling sound too.  In front of the boat, something started to move, letting in more light.  Grizzly pulled on his rope and, as it dropped down from high above him, gathered it into a coil and put it neatly on Uplander’s nose.  The gap in front of the boat got wider and wider, wide enough for at least one boat to pass through, then wide enough for two boats or more.  Sonning could see the whole width of the river, running bright and clear under a blue sky ahead of them. 

‘The lock monster is spitting us out!’ cheered the little bear.  ‘Grizzly’s rope must have pulled out the big mushroom it was tied around and it’s going to eat that instead.  Well done, Grizzly!  You’ve saved us!’ 

Uplander II started to move forward and was soon in the sunshine.  Sonning was very relieved indeed, until he remembered that Polar had said there were more locks ahead.

‘I hope there are giant mushrooms to feed to them too,’ he thought.  

Water was flowing fast into the river from the left.  Looking back up the channel, where the weir monster was, Sonning saw a waterfall.

‘How lovely!’ he said, looking the tumbling plumes of white water.  ‘If only there was a way of safely getting boats over the falls and avoiding the terrible weir monster, it would be much nicer than being eaten by the lock monster.  I wish there was a pretty waterfall along this channel too.’

That set Sonning wondering how he, his friends and their boat had got from above the waterfall down onto this lower section of the river without going over a cascade or down rocky rapids, but he just couldn't seem to work that out.  

If you don't know what a lock is, don't worry - I will explain soon!