Lifting our barge for its last great journey…

So – the scene was set. On the very day that the building-works started on the land where we were to do our barge lift, we all descended on site to get the deed done and get our project under way.

To be honest a soaking wet, freezing cold January morning (plus a hideously early start) was not how we had pictured the most important part of the project. The day seemed to slip into a kind of stress-from-hell scenario as firstly a 300 ton crane slowly moved onto site, followed by a couple of large articulated trucks carrying the counter-balance weights. An hour or so later and the crane was loaded with weights and ready to get the strops over the barge.

The team at Thames Riverworks Piling (who we got our barge from) had done a great job of clearing the site ready for the lift and the barge was sat nice and close into the bank, so with no real drama the team from Southern Cranes were suddenly crawling all over it, getting the strops under the hull and in place, feeling their way to the right balance across the barge. A couple of test lifts (which just upped our stress levels each time the barge went back in the water) and suddenly the barge was clear of the water and swinging in a graceful (?!?) arc across the Thames foreshore and onto the back of a trailer.

I’d seen YouTube videos of narrow-boats being lifted onto road transport before, with little fuss, and before we knew where we were, sure enough, the barge was strapped down and was leaving the site on it’s last great journey…

We’ve also got a video of the lift over on our YouTube channel just here.