Recent Weather

We have been very lucky.  We had 3 options of routes to take:-
1. The Leeds & Liverpool Canal
2. The Rochdale Canal
3. The Huddersfield Canals

We choose the L&L route - and we are very glad we did.  In the last few days we have seen on the news how the village of Hebdon Bridge on the Rochdale canal has suffered greatly from flooding.  As a rule canals don't flood, there are overflow weirs which take away excess water from the canal, depositing the water in local rivers.  However if the river is in flood and the canal is full, that is when problems occur.

Where we are cruising at present, the L&L looks down to the River Aire, and as can be seen from the  photos below, it too breached its banks.

Bingley Locks

Not far from Saltaire we came to the locks at Bingley.  The locks there are formed of a pair of staircase flights of locks, one formed on 3 locks and the other (& more famous) of 5 locks.  With staircase locks the upper gate of one lock is also the lower gate of the one above it - so in the 5 Rise there are five chambers, and six gates (the top and bottom gates and four intermediate gates).  The Photo to the left gives some idea of the scale of the locks.  From the bottom of the 3 Rise to the top of the 5 Rise the canal rises a total of 69 '11".

Both the 3 Rise and the 5 Rise are manned by BW lock keepers and the locks are closed outside their working hours  (8am to 4pm).

To the right, the photo is looking at the 3 Rise before starting up the flight.

Both the 3 and 5 Rises opened on 12 March 1774 and was a major feat of engineering at the time.

More recently in January 2012 the locks in the 5 Rise were drained for new gates to be installed.  The new gates are made of English Green Oak and with the balance bean weigh approximately 5 tons.









The view from the top of the Bingley 5 Rise (below) is quite spectacular, even though it was quite cloudy.   The dark chimney marks the Damart factory.

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.

Modern Cruising

Leaving the rather drab surroundings of Keadby, the first obstacle we met was a railway line that crossed the canal only a couple of feet above the water.  Next to the railways bridge was a small signalman's box, and it was up to the signal man to operate the bridge in between trains.

Following this swing bridge, progress was hindered by more swing bridges and lift bridges, but otherwise the Stainforth and Keadby Canal is quite unremarkable.

After 15 miles, 2 locks, 8 swing bridges and 1 lift bridge, we left the Stainforth & Keadby Canal as it joined the New Junction Canal.  We had met another boat cruising the same way as us, so to save us all some work, we would operate one bridge, and they would cruise through and operate the next.  As the bridges and the locks were electrically operated, there was nothing to be gained by an extra pair of hands.

Above is one of the lock control panels.

At one lift bridge, where it was my turn to do the operations, the fault light on the electric control panal was lit up.  There was no way I could raise the bridge.  However, the warning lights to stop traffic (like you get for railway crossings) were working and cars were stopping waiting for the bridge to lift up.  A phone call the British Waterways brought out a man and van, and he fixed the control mechanism in a matter of minutes.  But by now another 2 boats had joined us.

Domino is the boat closest to the stone edge.  Whilst I had the bridge raised for our four boats and one going the opposite way to us, I managed to delay a total of 39 vehicles.  Such power!

From the New Junction Canal, we joined the Aire & Calder Navigation (Knottingly & Goole Canal).  Again the main feature of this waterway are the very long straights.  However there were reminders that this waterway is still used for commercial purposes.

This great oil tanker dwarves little domino.  And big boats need big locks...

 This big lock is Lemonroyd and it has a depth of 13'6", its length is 200 foot, and width 20 foot, and whilst not the biggest lock in the UK, Lemonroyd lock is certainly huge.  (Incidentally the largest lock in the UK is Eastham Lock which is the entrance to the Manchester Ship Canal from the River Mersey).

With the recent rain parts of the Aire & Calder navigation have been closed off with the use of the flood locks.  Now I've seen some odd shaped locks in the past, but the Castleford Flood Lock is one of the most bizarre.

One of the surprises was our mooring at Castleford.  About a 15 minute walk from the mooring, and by guess work more than anything, we found the high street  of Castleford, and more importantly its indoor market,  The market was very similar to Chester market - with butchers stalls (all managing to be unique), fruit and veg stalls, a general grocery stall and many more.  The Castleford mooring was also a hit with Tonni as the moorings were not on any dog walkers routes. 

Next we are heading to Leeds, and after that we return to manual locks that are a great deal smaller than these ones.

And finally......

Surfing the Tidal River Trent

After leaving Lincoln, we "retraced our steps" back to Torksey, where we stopped over night before going back down onto the tidal River Trent.  The lock keeper informed us that the tide was 9 metres high, and it certainly seemed that way.  When we had previously been below Torksey Lock the walkway to the pontoon in the photo below was very steep as the floating pontoon was lower with the low tide.

So we left Torksey at almost high tide, and for the first hour or so it seemed we going against the tide and the boat engine was having to work hard, but despite that we overtook the boats that had shared the lock with us, and some boats that had left before us.

Scenery wise there was a great deal of green banks and occasional buildings including

The remains of Torksey Castle.  Built in the 16th Century, Torksey Castle was a manor house, which was burned to the ground in the Civil war - see - Torksey_Castle.

There are also quite a few power stations -

The Tidal Trent rushes passed Gainsborough, and there are very little moorings, so we weren't encouraged to stop there.  Which was just as well as we were now on an ebb tide and were travelling a great deal faster than we normally do on the canals.

The photo above is the main bridge into Gainsborough.

Not far from Gainsborough, the Chesterfield Canal joins the River Trent at West Stockwith.  We had planned on visiting the Chesterfiled, but the lock joining the two waterways has been out of order for much of the last week.  When we went passed we didn't see any sign of activity for repairing the lock gates.  Below is a picture of the lock .

Before long we reached Keadby, and what was to be one of the biggest challenges as boater we've ever faced.  The flow is taking us down stream, and the lock keeper's advice was to cruise passed the lock and then to turn around 180 degrees and approach the lock from that direction.  To add to the difficulty, there was a large "coaster" (or ship)  moored right next to the lock entrance.

As we were turning into the lock we were fighting the tide coming towards us coming from the River and from between the Ship and the wharf wall.  Domino was rocking as we fought our way into the lock, with no damage done.  Alton Towers eat your heart out!

Once in the lock the lock keeper secured our bow and stern ropes, which we held tight to keep us against the lock wall, whilst we waited for another couple of narrowboats to come and share the lock with us.

Note the boat in the background whizzing passed the lock before turning round to join us in the lock.

Straight after the lock is a swing bridge - this one was operated the the lock keeper,

We moored up for the night after the swing bridge.  We were both tired, and so was Tonni

Lincoln Castle - lots of history and pics - you've been warned!

Yesterday we visited Lincoln Castle.  From the outside, Lincoln Castle is dominated by its sand coloured walls.  Visitors entry is through the East Gate.

Above is the East Gate, viewed from inside the grounds.

Straight ahead from the East Gate is the Crown Court building - still very much in use today.  It as built between 1822 and 1826 - and unfortunately is only open to Court visitors - so we only got a look at the exterior if this magnificent building.  Recently the Court Service considered moving the Crown Court out of the Castle, but decided against doing so as it would be too expensive to do.

Above - Lincoln Crown Court seen from inside the castle grounds.


Also in the grounds is a large red brick building which was built in 1787 to house debtors and felons, and house the prison governor and his family.

The prison was extended in 1847.  For those convicted of felony, the regime was one of isolation - they were incarcerated in separate cells, and only referred to by number.  Daily they were taken to the chapel, with each prisoner wearing a mask before being placed in a little cubicle so that they could only see the Chaplin, but he could see every prisoner.

Prisoners incarcerated in separate system prisons were reduced to numbers, their names, faces and past histories eliminated. The guards and warders charged with overseeing these prisoners knew neither their names nor their crimes, and were prohibited from speaking to them. Prisoners were hooded upon exiting a cell, and even wore felted shoes to muffle their footsteps. The result was a dumb obedience and a passive disorientation that shattered the "criminal community." (source wikipedia).

The prison also housed debtors, who had some social contact - and when they attended they sat on wooden benches, sent back to the right of the Chaplin so that the felons could not see them.

Lincoln prison also housed some prisoners who were to be transported to America and later to Australia.  Capital punishment was also carried out at the Castle.  William Marwood, a local cobbler, developed a new method of hanging, called the "long drop", which had the benefit of killing the prisoner quickly by breaking his neck resulting in the prisoner dying of asphyxia while unconscious.  The previous "short drop" method killed the prisoners by strangulation and was considered which was particularly distressing to prison governors and staff who were required to witness executions at close quarters following the abolition of public executions by the Capital Punishment Amendment Act 1868.  In his nine years as a hangman, Marwood hung 176 people.

Also housed in the prison block is an exhibition of the Magna Carta.  I was always under the impression that there was only one Magna Carta, but in fact 4 still survive, one of which is at Lincoln Castle (although it is owned by Lincoln Cathedral).  The Lincoln copy has been over to the USA, and was kept in Fort Knox during much of the WWII.  Two other copies are held by the British Library, and the fourth copy is owned and displayed at Salisbury Cathedral.  For obvious reasons, I could not take any photographs of the document.

And to conclude our tour of Lincoln Castle we walked around most of the walls (unfortunately due to restoration works we could not walk right round).

The Cathedral as seen from the North wall.

 

The West gate as seen from North wall.

Bottom left is the Court, then a new development (sorry no idea what) and then the prison - the 1847 addition is to the right.  In the background is the cathedral.

The east gate in the foreground, with the observatory flying the Union Jack in the back ground.

 A bronze sculpture of Lincoln Castle.