Bingley Five Rise

We’re moored in Shipley today after descending the Bingley locks which consist of the Five Rise (or decent in our case), three and a two staircase. All but the two staircase are manned by CRT staff & volunteers. There were some boats coming up the locks so we had over an hours wait. Another boat joined us for the decent. It was tricky getting both the boats out of the lock as we were both 60 feet long. The other boat lifted their bow fender and we lifted our stern one. Just about all the top gates were very leaky. John had covered the engine & weed hatch covers with tarpaulin but the flow was SO strong his trainers were full of water & trousers soaked. Although we have a bilge pump there was still a good few inches of water that needed bailing & mopping out. This a 7 day mooring which is perfect as Edmund’s coming for a couple of days and to take us to Lance’s 1^st birthday party. I guess the canal will be busy over the bank holiday weekend. We’ll head further towards Leeds on Tuesday.

The scenery up here in Yorkshire & Lancashire is stunning, even when the hill tops are covered in clouds. There are mill buildings some with their tall chimneys scattered everywhere.

We had a good few days when Louise & Paul came to stay, even though the weather was dreadful. We retraced our steps after dropping them back at their car at Salterforth to spend 8 more days in Skipton. I really hope we can get a similar mooring when we go back to Skipton next month for Yarndale. Our bird feeder was VERY busy and we had to buy more food. We’ve never seen so many sparrows and have never seen jackdaws on it before. The starlings spent all their time bickering with each other and we thought a pigeon wouldn’t be able to take off after scoffing a whole tray of peanuts. 

We had arranged to have Nikita & Magnus sleep over while Heather, Jason & Lance went camping, however, the forecast for heavy rain & gale force winds put the kibosh on that. So we had a massive sleepover with all of them on the boat. It was great, the two big kids on camping mats in the saloon, Lance on the floor at the bottom of our bed where Heather & Jason slept. We taught Heather & Jason how to play cribbage. Sunday was overcast & showery but we managed to stay dry during a visit to Skipton Castle where there was a Norman re-enactment weekend and a walk in Skipton Woods.

 

We’ve had quite a bit of a problem when the computer installed it’s anniversary update late one evening when the battery was low and it shut down before it had completed it's update. It seemed to interfere with John’s new GPS, after resetting the computer and reinstalling the update whilst the engine was running it’s now all sorted. And the lens on the camera’s broken. But we’ve got the little camera and the zoom lens is working OK.