Monday 17th August, 2015 at King's Road Lock, Altofts.
We awoke to a lovely sunny morning. Our mooring, right in the city centre, had been surprisingly quiet overnight. It's an interesting experience to watch a large city gradually waking up, seeing people going to work, catching trains, rushing from one place to another, etc.
Before we set off, we walked back up to Office Lock, to the very last milepost marker on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal. One side says "127 miles to Liverpool" and the other side should say "0 miles", but it is painted over with graffiti. Sadly, graffiti is a syndrome from which Leeds suffers badly.
Having said goodbye to Clinton and Sharon on "Tacet" and Honor and Gerry on "The Great Escape" (they will leave tomorrow to go south on the River Trent), we left our mooring at the Granary Wharf.
A few hundred yards away was Lock 1, our last lock on the Leeds & Liverpool. We moored MM to set the lock and saw this blue plaque on the wall of the building next to the lock. 46 years and £1.2 million was a huge investment in time and money to complete the canal but wow! - what a canal!
The stretch of the L&L that we have travelled has varied widely - from the industrial towns of Lancashire to the idyllic beauty of its remote summit pound, delightful Yorkshire market towns and the manufacturing cities like Blackburn and Leeds.
Our guide book "bible" by J.M. Pearson describes the Liverpool & Leeds Canal thus: "Liverpool lies 97 heavy duty, manually operated, malediction-inducing, locks to the west." And he doesn't even mention the cursed swing bridges! M describes it more succinctly as "an obstacle course!" She is, of course, referring to the innumerable locks and swing bridges, many of which were in very poor condition and no two of which were alike. Nevertheless, it has been utterly marvellous and we were sorry to leave it. We enjoyed it so much that we may well do it again next year - only the other way around!
So through Lock 1 and on to the River Aire - and what a change - wide, deep and clear. The river can flood after heavy rain and there are guages at each lock. Luckily they were clearly "in the green".
Looking back to where the River Aire flows under the railway station, we saw the construction of the tall new entrance to Leeds railway station that will allow access directly to the waterfront area,, which is one of the city's best features.
As we approached the first lock on the River, we were overtaken by one of the little yellow water taxis containing - to our surprise - Honor and Gerry, who were waving cheerfully and photographing us photographing them.
The locks on the River are all very large and electrically operated. These days they are no longer manned as there is no commercial traffic any more, so we had to master operating the control panels. Initially there was some confusion as the instructions kept referring to lights that would come on at certain points - but there were no lights! Anyway, this donkey seemed to think our efforts were amusing!
One of the lock keeper's cottages was for sale and M was tempted, not because it was a nice house (which it wasn't), but because it had three (yes, three!) red telephone boxes in the garden (all in need of TLC). It also appeared to have a resident giraffe!
It appeared from this "autographed" flowerbed that John Sergeant had visited the lock whilst "Barging Round Britain, 2015" - presumably for his new TV series. Something to look forward to later in the year?
The locks on the River are huge! Poor MM looks like a Dinky toy!
At Castleford, there is a crossroads with the canal to Hull going east, the River going straight on and the canal going to the west and Wakefield (our destination tomorrow). The turning arrives with very little warning, requiring a very sharp turn to the right! Oops - nearly overshot!!!
Finally, we reached the moorings at King Road Lock to discover that the Visitors' Moorings are being turned into Permanent Moorings. Still, there was space, so we moored up anyway.
Later in the evening, we sat on MM's stern to look for the International Space Station, which sadly did not make an appearance between the clouds, but we did get another lovely sunset.
Today: 13 miles, 7 locks and 6.1 hours.
Trip: 252 miles, 149 locks and 160.1 hours.
No comments:
Post a Comment