Now for something different

Leaving Castleford and its odd shaped flood lock behind, we proceeded along the River Aire.  The navigable rivers of England have warning boards indicating whether or not the river is in (1) normal conditions (green), (2) caution to be taken (orange) or (3) in flood, do not proceed (red).  At Castleford Lock (below) the measuring board is behind the lock gate, whilst the explanation board can be seen beside the lock.

When we did manage to see the measuring board, we were already committed to cruising the River Aire despite seeing that the water level was well within the orange sector.  We continued on the basis that it was one of British Waterways' staff that had actually opened the lock and let us proceed - still we were glad we were only on the river section for two miles before we rejoined the canal at Lemonroyd Lock.  Lemonroyd Lock is one seriously BIG lock - its 13' 6" deep, its over 200 foot in length, and 20 foot wide.  It takes a lot of water to fill this long lock - poor little Domino looks a bit lost in the lock . . .

Before long we reached Leeds, and we were fortunate enough to be able to moor in Clarence Dock, a short walk from the city centre.

To the left of the photo is the  Royal Armouries Leeds - a fascinating museum of arms and armour, which is also free to enter.  All wars are represented from pre-Roman to the present day - well worth a visit.  As part of the building, there is a four storey tower called the Hall of Steel.  Displayed on the inside walls of the tower are a wide variety of swords, armour and weapons.  The inside of the tower can be viewed from each floor, but is best viewed using the clever mirror prism at the base of the tower giving a 360 degree view.

After a couple of pleasant days exploring Leeds, we started up the Leeds & Liverpool Canal.  We were fortunate enough to be able to pair up with another boat and were able to share the locks with them.

An additional benefit of sharing the locks was that we had extra muscle when it came to opening the lock gates, which on a few occasions needed three of us to shift them open.

The lock and paddle gear on these locks was nothing liked anything we have experienced before -

 The above photo is of one of the different gate paddles.

This is one of the ground paddles - some like this one just have a spindle to put your windlass on, others like the one below have a permanent "T" bar to be turned.

The chain is locked as an anti-vandal mechanism, an attempt to stop pranksters emptying the pounds between locks.  This only works of course if firstly boaters relock the mechanism after use, and that the lock is in working order to begin with.  There are many broken chains.  The wooden box encasing the ground paddle is as rickety as it looks, they are very heavy to turn (except on locks where a lock keeper is on duty, funny that) and when winding the paddle down - they can be lethal if you let go - the paddle gear goes down fast and that "T" swings round very fast - I was lucky to get away with bruising.  I am defiantly not a fan of these ground paddles - give me the reduction gears of the Hatton Flight please!

So the locks are hard work, and so are most of the swing bridges.  The majority require unchaining with a handcuff/anti-vandal key and then just pushing open, and pulling close.  Only they don't want to open, or close.  The main problem is that the balance isn't set right and they aren't maintained.   Most of these swing bridges are to allow access for a farmer to his field or to a house, but where the swing bridge carries more traffic, they tend to be electrically operated.  However, we did encounter one rouge bridge - it required a BW key to lower each of the road barriers, and then a windless to first unlock the bridge and then on another spindle more winding to open the bridge, which started moving whilst I was on the bridge.

Whilst this was a road bridge, it didn't get much traffic - only delayed one car.

I'll leave you with a photo of the mill at Saltaire.  Saltaire was founded in 1851 by Sir Titus Salt, a leading industrialist in the Yorkshire woollen industry.  Sir Salt built neat stone houses (much better than the slums of Bradford), wash-houses with tap water, bath-houses, a hospital and an institute for recreation and education, with a library, a reading room, a concert hall, billiard room, science laboratory and a gymnasium. The village had a school for the children of the workers, almshouses, allotments, a park and a boathouse.   This combination of houses, employment and social services the original town is often seen as an important development in the history of 19th century urban planning.