A Very Rainy Day and a Delightful Tearoom to the Rescue.

Friday 14th August, 2015 at Bottom Farm near Apperley Bridge.
It rained, and it rained, and it rained! (with apologies to A.A. Milne). In fact, it had rained all night and we awoke to steady rain. Despite the forecast for continual rain, we decided to move on, not least because we felt a trifle vulnerable moored on the towpath at Shipley, which one of the guide books describes as "Saltaire's Ugly Sister". Twice, groups of Asian youths had cycled past at speed yesterday shouting something very abusive at the boats and one of them had kicked the boat behind us.
Although it did appear that the heavy rain had drastically reduced the number of passers by this morning, we set off anyway.
It was not without its compensations. The surroundings soon became rural and leafy again and, leading to one of the swing bridges, M saw this lovely paved track, which could once have been a tramway.

We arrived at Field Locks, another three-lock staircase. Unfortunately, this time there were no C&RT volunteers to help us in the rain, so we carefully studied the instruction board, which seemed very complicated.

It required you to set the water level in the middle lock by means of a guage - but no guage was visible, so we just went ahead slowly and carefully. It transpired that the guage was actually under water so we had to wait for the excess water in the middle lock to run out through the overflows.

By now the rain was of the "stair-rods" variety, so doing locks and swing bridges meant that we got very wet indeed.  At least on MM we could shelter under our large "Stobart" umbrella.

M discovered to her horror that her waterproof no longer lived up to its name.  Well, it IS nearly twenty years old and has served her well so she can't complain.  However, she DID complain when the damp started seeping through to her underwear! You can imagine our delight, when coming round a bend, we saw a sign announcing "Toby's Tea Room" and next to it a good place to moor! Oh Joy!

It is on a beautiful stretch of canal bordered by lovely fields of horses, rabbits and trees. It was too inviting to pass by, so we hastily moored up and tramped our way to the tea room door.

We presented ourselves, dripping wet and received a warm welcome in, what turned out to be, a delightful little café attached to a thriving livery stable. Our soggy waterproofs were whisked off to dry "out the back" and we sat down with a sigh of relief to hot drinks and good food. To our even greater joy, the tearoom had a resident cat who immediately "bonded" with R.

His name is Madison and officially he is not allowed in the tearoom but has learnt crafty ways of sneaking in - as cats do!
Eventually, we made our way back to MM, having decided to stay here for the rest of the day and overnight. To our amusement, Madison followed us all the way back to the boat and, for two pins (or maybe a tin of "Sheba"), he would have joined us on board.

A lovely quiet afternoon was the order of the day as the rain continued well into the evening almost without a break. Later in the evening, Madison came to visit again, watching us through the window, standing on the gunwhale.

By the time that sunset was approaching, the rain eased off and we were rewarded with a beautiful cloudscape.

On account of the weather, very few boats travelled today, other than us. In fact, we only saw one other boat all day.
Today: 4 miles, 3 locks and 4.4 hours.
Trip: 229 miles, 129 locks and 145.7 hours.