Leeds and Liverpool Canal/Aire and Calder Navigation. Rodley to Beal Lock..

We had a fortnight at Calverley Lodge before moving down to the visitor moorings at Rodley. This meant leaving behind about a million froglets that had taken up residence between the boat and the bank.

It also put Legend right by the Leeds Ring Road bridge but as we were off to Ely folk Festival for the weekend we didn’t mind. This is Ann-Marie in the middle of a Witchmen Morris Workshop.

She couldn’t walk for a few days afterwards. Star of the show for us was the fabulously talented Lucy Ward. This is the shuttle bus from the festival site to the city.

When we got back we found a suspicious puddle in the bottom of the fire. We tried – unsuccessfully – to convince ourselves that it was due to excessive rain, but it never happened last year and in the end an inconvenient truth made itself plain. For the last six months or so the central heating has mysteriously needed topping up more often than it ought, and Dave has been quietly wondering where the water has been going. Now that we’ve had several weeks without a fire the mystery is solved. It’s been leaking out of the rusty back boiler. When we had the fire going all the time it turned into steam and went up the chimney so we didn’t notice. This makes us wonder how long it’s been leaking as we had the fire going more or less constantly all through what we laughingly refer to as last summer.

Between us we wrestled the fire out of the boat and onto the towpath where Dave managed to wriggle the old boiler out.

We got a new one delivered to David & Kate’s house and David dropped it off as he was passing in the lorry. Very convenient.

The new one is stainless steel so it should outlast us, if not the boat.

Following the advice in our Nicholson Guide, we left Rodley and went straight into Leeds passing through Kirkstall and Newlay locks in the morning on a weekday.

Apart from the lock keepers we didn’t see anyone but they both told us of their own experiences with crowds of youngsters converging on the locks on weekend afternoons. The weather was glorious and when we got further into Leeds itself at Oddy locks there were a bunch of kids swimming in the bottom lock chamber. They all started to get out when we arrived, but we were stopping for water so we told them they could carry on for a while.

On a tip-off from one of the lock keepers we stopped for our first night in Leeds just above Office Lock on the off-side.

Just below the lock are the pontoon moorings in Granary Wharf which, we were told, charges £6 for two nights, although there weren’t any signs confirming this. The water point above the lock hasn’t worked for several years and makes a handy, and free, overnight mooring. This was to be our last night on the Leeds and Liverpool as the next day saw us drop through River Lock onto the Aire & Calder Navigation.

We didn’t go far though, just round the corner into Clarence Dock, right under the imposing Royal Armouries Museum.

We spent the whole of the following day in the museum and we were thoroughly blown away by the experience.

We left Clarence Dock on Saturday morning with John & Gill, some more friends from 2CV land on board. They live near Woodlesford Lock, so they came into Leeds on the train and joined us for a trip down the river. John was born and bred in Leeds so he was able to provide some local history as we boated past the disused loading wharves and through the big river locks. We moored up on the spacious visitor moorings at Woodlesford

and had a lovely evening at John & Gills house. Gill is part of “Woodlesford In Bloom” who, as well as looking after the beautiful displays around the lock, also do a stunning job throughout this lovely village.

We had intended to move on fairly quickly, but John & Gill made us feel so welcome that we stayed for nearly a week. While we were there we booked our trusty old Punto in for an MOT. It responded by having a complete clutch failure the day before which sent us both into fits of despair; Dave, because he’d only just done one, and Ann-Marie because we’d only just paid £200 for a new back boiler. Fortunately it turned out to be a hydraulic leak from the slave cylinder; a £35 ten minute job. We think our old friend Karma got a bit over excited; John has got a to-die-for garage and she wanted to give Dave a day in there mending something. The next day it was back in and passed, but probably for the last time. It’s got the beginnings of terminal rot between floor and sill, so we’ll keep it for a year or till something big goes wrong then kiss it good bye. We’re not at all upset; it’s done exactly what we wanted it to do, ie. be invisible. We’ve parked it in pub car-parks, side streets, lay-bys and picnic sites for days on end with no worries and no problems. As the MOT tester said, “When it’s worth nowt you don’t worry about it.”

On the other side of the river from the navigation there is the newly established St Aidens bird sanctuary and nature reserve. This used to be a massive open cast coal mine, but after a disastrous breach of the river bank which filled it with water and caused the river to run backwards for several days, nature is rapidly reclaiming it, and apart from one of the colossal drag-lines which act as a reminder near the visitor centre, there is little evidence of what went on there.

We walked around it a couple of times looking at all the coots, grebes, geese, swans, lapwings, buntings and ducks. It is incredibly peaceful in a squawky, honky, flappy, splashy kind of way. And we saw a Marsh Harrier, so there.

From Woodlesford we went through the deep Lemonroyd Lock and on to Castleford. At Lemonroyd this strange looking craft is tethered jus bellow the weir.

It’s called Oblinarc and has six hydroelectric turbines inside.

On the visitor moorings at Castleford we had another serendipity moment, albeit a rather sad one. The very last commercial sand carrying barge came through the flood lock on its way to Wakefield.

We thought it would be worth a photo or two. Then we found out it was on its last trip. It was very emotional watching the end of an era, hearing the skipper and the lock keeper exchange their last Ow do’s as six hundred tonnes of sand and gravel gently slid through the lock. From now on this great commercial waterway that opened up the east of England to trade will only be plied by pleasure boats.

We’ve decided that as we are in Yorkshire it would be rude not to visit York. This means a trip up the tidal River Ouse which, everyone tells us, is not as scary as it sounds, so we’ve booked ourselves through Selby Lock on Monday. So instead of turning right at Castleford we turned left towards Goole and the North Sea. Karen and Andrew are coming to stay on board for a few days and will be making the passage with us. Should be fun.

In the morning we took the car to Beal Lock on the River Aire and cycled back to Castleford. After lunch we set off through Bulholme Lock then followed the river to Ferrybridge, passing the enormous power station (once supplied by coal barges, now everything comes by road or rail), under the original Great North Road bridge then through the flood lock. When the lock cottage was built the view was slightly different.

At the far end of Knottingly we left the Aire and Calder Navigation and turned north east through Bank Dole Lock onto the River Aire. This is a very bendy bit of river that will take us to the Selby Canal. We stopped for one night at Beal Lock where we’d left the car; tomorrow we’ll move up to West Haddlesey where Karen and Andrew will be coming aboard.

Leeds & Liverpool Canal. Dowley Gap to Calverley.

It’s actually feeling like summer now. The flowers are starting to attract admiring comments and we’ve had strawberries off the boat roof. We also got sunburnt and were driven nuts by a plague of flies at Dowley Gap, reminding us what a British summer is really all about.

We got to see Jim, Liz and Alan while we were there, they live within walking distance of Dowley, so we managed to rendezvous in various pubs in and around Bingley during the week. Also, David and Kate came over for a very enjoyable evening of fish pie and a game of triv. Sometimes it seems like our life is one big social whirlwind.

We went for a walk through Shipley Glen and over Baildon Moor looking for “Cup and Ring Marked Rocks” which our OS Explorer map of Bradford & Huddersfield assures us are there.

It was a lovely walk but sadly - unless what we thought to be quite ordinary looking boulders were actually some prehistoric artefacts - we failed to find them. What we did find was some Chicken of the Woods; an edible fungus.

David came along as crew member on the trip from Dowley Gap to Saltaire and had a go on the tiller.

This meant that he was on the boat on his own going down Hirst lock which is a bit leaky to say the least. Legend only just fits in these short L&L locks so to get the bottom gates open she has to be backed right up to the cill, which quite often means putting the back deck into a waterfall. Unfortunately, the one bit of information Dave forgot to give David before his turn at the helm, was to keep the doors shut when you do that, preferably with yourself on the dry side of them. The result of that omission was a thorough soaking in the trouser department and a couple of inches of water in the engine ‘ole. Well it gave the auxiliary bilge pump an outing and occupied the boys for an hour or two when we got moored up! We managed to get onto the one unlimited mooring in Saltaire, between the bridge and the ice-cream boat.

It was predictably busy with lots of interest in what we do, how far we’ve come, where we’re going and all the other FAQs (top of the list, of course, is “How much does one of these cost then?” which is like asking how long a piece of string is.)

After one night in Saltaire we were off, through Shipley

and out into the countryside again.

We moored up at the top of Field Locks after a succession of swing bridges, which as usual, all had different designs and machinery. One had Ann-Marie standing in the middle of it whilst winding the mechanism with a windlass, like it was some Victorian merry-go-round. And one, which if a local dog-walking chap hadn’t happened to come along and tell us we needed to jump up and down on it to get it moving, we’d not have opened at all. Actually we would have opened it; we’d have done what several other crews had obviously done before us and given it a gentle nudge with the boat. (A 17 tonne nudge will move most things.) We did the sensible thing and put a notice on it.

In the evening Rob and Dalvinder, some more 2CV mates who live round here, came for tea. Or, more precisely, Rob and Dalvinder came along and brought tea with them. Dal took over our kitchen and in no time at all turned out spicy pakoras to start with followed by a delicious lamb curry that lasted for two days after they’d gone home. It was a brilliant evening with lots of reminiscing about the 20 odd years we’ve all known each other.

A couple of days later we were off again, down Field and Dobson’s locks and through Apperley Bridge to moor up at Calverley Lodge swing bridge, just before Rodley.

We took on water just above Dobson’s at what must be the slowest water point on the network. It was even slower than the one at the bottom of the Napton flight, but unlike there we couldn’t abandon it because there isn’t another one till we get to Office Lock in the middle of Leeds. While we were waiting it would have been a good idea to check the paddles on the staircase lock we were about to go down, that way we would have discovered that someone had left one of the top ones open. Instead we found out when the boat was in the lock and we were emptying the top step into the bottom step. To make matters worse we weren’t sure which paddle it was and instead of closing the open one, we opened the closed one. By the time we’d shut all the paddles and stopped running around, the bottom step was overflowing the gates and the top one was half full of water that we didn’t need, so we had to half empty the bottom step again, then drop the water from the top into the bottom, which overflowed it again, then move the boat, then empty it again. It sounds complicated. It isn’t really; staircases sound daunting when you try to describe them, but it’s just a logical sequence and all it needs is a bit of common sense. We can normally be quite slick at negotiating locks and moving bridges, so our pride took a bashing when we found ourselves wasting several thousand gallons of water unnecessarily. We were slightly annoyed at whoever left the lock like that but even more annoyed at ourselves for not checking it properly before we went in, however it was quite encouraging to see that the spill weirs were still running when we’d finished.

We cycled into Leeds from Calverley Lodge to have a look at the Waterfront Festival, and Leeds itself. We’d heard nice things about the city and we expected to be impressed. What we hadn’t expected was the wealth of fascinating architecture; the Market Hall, the Corn Exchange, the Arcades, all of which had us walking around looking up with our mouths open.

More and more, as we explore this country of ours, do we find that we’ve lived in it for all of our lives yet never really looked at it. We’ve been all over Europe, we’ve even been round the world, and yes, we’ve visited lots of diverse and beautiful countries bursting with stunning scenery and fabulous cities full of amazing buildings and we feel privileged to have been able to do all that…but.

England. There’s nowhere like it. All you need to do to appreciate it is to be a tourist.

The Waterfront Festival was spread over four sites; Granary Wharf, Brewery Wharf, Clarence Dock, and Thwaite Mills, so we locked the bikes up and walked between them. There was quite a lot of stuff going on; live music and street traders at Granary Wharf, more music and lots of food stalls at Brewery Wharf, dragon boat racing, boat trips and yet more music at Clarence Dock and our friend Kennet on display at the little riverside industrial museum at Thwaite Mills, along with a steam crane and a big Humber sailing barge.

It was quite a hike to get there along the riverbank from the city centre, so rather than walking we took the Free Vintage Bus back then biked back to the boat. After cycling for 14 miles and walking around all day we felt we’d earned an ice cream.

This is Razor and his owner Anyta.

We know this because we have a thank-you card from them. We have a thank-you card because Razor fell in the canal and Dave, in true Hero Mode, pulled him out. As you can see he’s a big hairy dollop and the bank here is either Armco or concrete which made it virtually impossible for him to get himself out so it was lucky we were here. Anyway it all ended happily, and they stopped by later in the day with the card , a bottle of wine and a little narrow pot with a shooting bamboo in it.

The perfect gift for a narrow window-sill!

Interesting things have been going on boat-wise; we did our annual oil and filter change, and Dave decided to see if he could do anything to cut down the Lister’s smoking habit. This involved a day spent emptying the engine room, a lot of fiddling about on his knees in the sump trying to get the fuel pumps synchronised, several hours experimenting with different idle-screw settings, and an evening scratching his head, wondering why the governor had started fluctuating when he hadn’t been anywhere near it. It’s all back together again now with another Weetabix gasket, time will tell whether anything positive has been achieved.

There is a new vent in the back above the battery box.

This is because now that we’ve put a cowling from the engine to the other vent it means that any fumes from the batteries need another way of escaping. In reality there is quite enough with all the gaps round the doors and the hatch, but we thought it would be a good idea to put a proper one in as we have our BSS examination coming up next year, the main concern of which is ventilation.

On and off for about a year we’ve been discussing how best to utilise the tiny space that is our kitchen; it always ends up unresolved because nothing so far has made us both say “Yes, that would work.” However we finally had an idea that we both like and we went off to Ikea and bought some drawers. Of course it’s a boat so they don’t fit, but after a couple of days spent fettlin’ them we now have four very useful drawers where there was once a thin annoying cupboard. We’re so impressed that we think we’ll do the same to one of our other cupboards as well. More fettlin’ of course, but that just adds to the sense of achievement!

Leeds & Liverpool Canal. Gargrave to Dowley Gap.

Unfortunately there aren’t as many photos in this post as we’d like, this is because Dave has taken to using the camera on his new smart phone rather than carrying his Fuji around. This is a perfectly sensible decision, and all the time we had the ability to load the photos onto a computer it was unquestionably the right thing to do. Unfortunately we have recently lost that ability. Not, as you may think, through a software related issue, or even a hardware interface incompatibility. No, this is the direct result of the Catherine wheel of over-confidence landing in the wood pile of the ill equipped, or, to put it more plainly, a muppet not thinking about the consequences of his actions until it’s too late. More on this later!

Mooring in Skipton was very pleasant with nice weather and lots of folk milling around. Having loads of people watching when you’re mooring up or nipping through one of the hundreds of swing bridges that litter the canal round here is really good, as with a bit of practice you can make it look very slick and impressively easy. The real test comes when you’re backing out of an arm or winding round in a town centre. Narrowboats can be horribly unpredictable going backwards and you know very well that in a town with a canal running through the middle, a lot of the onlookers will be boaters themselves. Happily when we left Skipton, with Liz and Jim on board and after a slap-up lunch in the famous Pie and Mash Shop, it all went according to plan. Legend behaved impeccably as she backed out from under Fred Truman’s outstretched bowling arm, turned and slipped demurely under Belmont Bridge on her way towards Kildwick.

We stopped for one night just before Farnhill Bridge; the closest we could get to the Aire Cooled Alley Cats 2CV club camp at Cononley. The following night we moved into Kildwick which was a lot nicer and a bit away from the main road.

While we were there David & Kate came to stay on board so they could join us for the curry night at the camp. That was a fabulous evening and it was really lovely to meet up with a bunch of people we hadn’t seen for ages.

Hopefully, as they mostly live around here, we’ll see more of them as we meander down the Aire Valley.

From there we went to a very quiet off-side mooring right in the middle of Keighley golf course.

While we were there Dave decided to cut up all the fire-wood we’ve been collecting and stack it on the roof pallet under a tarpaulin. It looks tidier and it’ll be dry and seasoned when we come to lighting the fire again. He’d got it all logged and was on the outside gunnel taking the sheet off when the Catherine wheel of over-confidence bounced off his head. His sandal-clad foot slipped and because he was only holding the hand rail from underneath he couldn’t stop himself and in he went. Not too bad; it was warm, he didn’t hit anything or have lots of heavy clothes on and he got out quick enough. The only problem was that his new phone, the one with all the photos, was in his pocket. Oops.

After that we had a couple of nights on Riddlesden visitor moorings, but we weren’t on board much while Legend was there; we were mostly at David & Kate’s house, three miles away. Although they are our oldest and bestest friends and we’d have gone there anyway, and despite the attraction of yummy cake and a washing machine, our main reason for going this weekend was to service the Punto and help with a clutch change on their C1. As these jobs are obviously 100% blue, the girlies amused themselves with beading and going to the Skipton Day of Dance which was all very good.

The reason for our slow advancement along the cut to that point was because we were pacing ourselves in order to be just in the right place at the right time to go down the Bingley five and three rises on a summer Sunday in the sunshine.

And we did, and it was brilliant. We had six extra people on board; Matt & Emma with Elizabeth and Amelia, their two little girls, and Lucy & Bethan, none of whom had ever been on a narrowboat before. There is a resident lock keeper at each staircase and a couple of CRT volunteers as well, but Ann-Marie still managed to do her fair share of windlass winding. Between them the Bingley locks drop the canal 90’ in about a quarter of a mile. We left the sanitary station at the top at half past eleven and we were moored up at the bottom under the Damart chimney at one. In a staircase the bottom gate of the top lock is also the top gate of the next one and so on. Each lock is twelve feet deep which means that when you’re going down, the gate that is right behind you is towering twenty-four feet above your head.

And, as our boat only just fits in L&L locks, in order to get the bottom gates open, you have to back it right up to the cill, which sometimes has a small waterfall running down it. Dave had the back doors shut so the engine room stayed dry but he still got a bit damp round the edges.

The locky advised us not to stop overnight in Bingley, so we carried on to Dowley Gap which is lovely and has a car park and a pub.

We’ll be here for the rest of the week, then we’ll go through Saltaire and Shipley and probably stop at Apperley Bridge for a day or so.

Thankfully we got free insurance with the phone bundle so it’s gone back and we’re currently awaiting news, but popular opinion is that water damage is likely to be terminal so the photos on the internal memory will be lost. As will 79 levels of Candy Crush. Damn!

Leeds & Liverpool Canal. South Field Bridge to Gargrave.

We’ve done some actual proper boating to get here. Six miles and eight locks in fact.

Now we know that doesn’t sound a whole lot to anyone who’s ever hired a boat or gone on a summer cruise, or anyone else for that matter, but for us it’s good going. Especially as all the miles were bendy and all the locks were big.

These are just one of the many different ground paddles that you find on the L&L.

Ok, so we did it over two days, but they were consecutive days; we stopped for one night above Bank Newton locks because there’s a three day mooring restriction in Gargrave and we wanted to be there till Sunday. If there were any concerns about a shortage of water up here we didn't notice, in fact we had more of the stuff than we knew what to do with most of the time.

Before all this activity Legend was at South Field Bridge for a week although we weren’t on board. We were mostly driving around in the southern half of the country engaged in our second favorite hoby; visiting. First we went to Frankie & Harry’s in Hoddesden to help them pack all their remaining worldly belongings into a big white van and wave as it disappeared over the horizon towards France. They boarded a ferry and joined it about a week later to start their new life near Bordeaux. Good luck you two, we’ll miss you but we know you’re doing the right thing.

Then we went and got sunburned at the Trout Inn, near Lechlade-on-Thames, in the company of a gang of our old 2CV mates. We took our faithful dinghy with us and went for a paddle on the river past St Johns lock and up to Lechlade. Sometime in the future we’ll be back in Legend to do the same trip, although we doubt if we’ll be porting the boat round the lock on that occasion.

After that we had a lovely quiet couple of days at Chloe’s. We both had appointments nearby; Dave at the Dentist in Southam and Ann-Marie at the optician’s in Leamington Spa. It might seem to the casual observer that we just throw our lives together, wandering aimlessly hither and thither with not apparent plan. But look deeper, Dear Reader, and you’ll find that it is, in fact, a carefully orchestrated seamless coincidence of havoc. We usually leave the organisation to Karma; that seems to have more chance of working rather than trying to work it out using logic. Chloe came with us to Leamington Spa and we trudged about in the drizzle until it became obvious that we were only going to get wetter, whereupon she went home. It was lovely to see you Chloe. Chin up Chuck, Shandy will be back from Afghanistan next month.

Since we’ve been at Gargrave we’ve had a trek up to Malham, where we visited the village, the cove and the tarn, all of which are on the Pennine Way. Of course we’re getting to be old hands at the Pennine Way now, but nothing prepared us for this.

We managed to choose the day when a huge sponsored walk was going on. These guys are walking 100k in 30 hours and we got swept along with them for a very small portion of it. There was a staggering amount of technical clothing and more ski poles than you could shake a – well - stick at, but the ends justify the means. If we’re honest, we were quite humbled by their effort and determination, and all to raise money for people in a faraway country that they’ve never met and never will. If they’re willing to do that, then the least we can do is allow them the odd designer label and bit of carbon-fibre without sniggering.

Dave got the tiller swan-neck painted, something we’ve wanted to do for ages but never got round to, and the handle has now got some nice colourful Turk’s head knots on it, which disguises the fact that it’s a 3’ length of conduit.

We’re in the middle of a gorgeous sunny spell at the moment so we’re making the most of it. The visitor moorings here are very sociable with people walking past all the time. Our table and chairs are out on the towpath and everyone is really friendly. A newspaper photographer came along and asked if he could take some photos of us and our boat in “Relaxing-in-the-Sun” mode, so Ann-Marie pretended to fall asleep while he snapped away.

He hasn’t emailed us so we think our 15 minutes of fame may have ended up on the Guardian editorial waste paper bin. Ah well.

We’re off to Howarth tomorrow with David & Kate, then on Monday we’ll be boating again through three locks and three swing bridges towards, but not quite into, Skipton. That’ll mean we can be through Skipton and moored up at Farnhill Bridge next weekend which just happens to be about half a mile from Cononley where the Aire Cooled Alley Cats 2CV Club anniversary camp is taking place. You see? Karma at the controls again.

Here's some nice photos of Malham