Monday 3 October 2016

Where did September go?

The time is just whizzing by and it seems as if autumn arrived suddenly on 1st October. The fire’s been on for quite a few days now. The mornings are crisp and mostly clear with some magical misty ones throw in for good measure.

September was a busy month with two sets of friends coming to stay for just under a week each.

We has glorious weather when Lyn & Kevin came. I went on my first canal holiday with Lyn more than 30 years ago and it was Kevin’s first narrow boat cruise. We went up the Bingley 5 rise with
them and ended their trip at Skipton. Sadly Kevin’s not been at all well and was in hospital when they got home, however, Lyn’s reassured us his ‘episode’ wasn’t anything to do with being on the boat and he’s slowly getting better.

Yvonne & Mike joined us for their first narrow boat experience a few days after. Their trip revolved around going to the ‘Yarndale’ festival held in Skipton. We put up our bright knitted bunting with fairy lights on for the festival and yarn bombed the ice cream boat with bunting & pompoms too and stupidly forgot to take any photos of either. Cheryl and her daughter popped in for bacon butties and then strolled to Yarndale with us. Although I really didn’t need a new spindle and fibre to spin on it, I accidentally brought some!!!!!! We dropped Yvonne & Mike off at Gargrave last Wednesday.


All in all we’ve spent about 3 weeks in Skipton over the summer. It’s a vibrant little town and it’s healthy bird population along the tow path continued to eat a whole feeder & a half of seed each day. We helped the floating 'shed' through the swing in Skipton.  We've met the chap & lad before.  He's pulling the shed that floats on a couple of canoes and the lad has a bath tub strung to some large 25 litre tubs that he paddles along.  They are raising money for a theatre.













We are heading back to West Lancashire so we can spend the whole winter on the Rufford Arm of the Leeds & Liverpool canal right by the Overells. We are stopping off at some different places, Silsden, Barboldswick (pronounced Barlick) and Barrowford. In addition to our favourite spot on ‘t’ Yorkshire Moors above Gargrave where we did a spot of walking along the Pennine Way.



We asked Edmund to help us down the Wigan flight and another 5-6 people have offered to come and help too, plus the 4 crew from our boat & nb Emma Maye (who we went up the flight with way back in July). Let’s just hope it’s not pouring down.

2 comments:

  1. Hi there 'Burnt Oak'...

    My wife and I also attended Yarndale last month - we merged it as a day trip (by car) with the rest of a week's hire out of Riley Green. We also went down (and up) Wigan flight in order top meet up with my in-laws...

    We are considering something similar for next years Yarndale, but hiring from Silsden instead and taking the boat as close as possible to the cattle market...

    Can you advise whether mooring is possible on the offside at the yarndale site?

    Thanks, Martin

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  2. Hello Martin,
    Hope you enjoyed Yarndale, we went Saturday and it was packed. Sunday we'd hoped to knit & spin on the tow path, but the weather had other ideas!!! The mooring on the off side at Skipton by bridge 176 is Skipton Cruising Club (I think) and they would no doubt charge you to moor there. However, there was plenty of mooring either side of that bridge, where we were moored, it's a short walk up through Airville Park. Did you get down to the canal and see our boat with it's snazzy bunting & pompoms? We'll probably be heading south next summer so won't be at Yarndale.

    This coming Sunday 31st October 'The Wool Boat' has their 5th Burscough Fibre Festival at The Grove, Station Approach, Burscough, L40 0RZ. We're moored near by & will be helping during the day. Pop along to this tiny event (compared to Yarndale).
    Best wishes
    Martina (& John)

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