Thursday 12 April 2018

And we're off... Ruddy River!

Here we are then - we've began(begun?) our journey to Liverpool ...Base-plate fridge acting as an overflow for the TOO small 12v Inlander Fridge Freezer....


Alan joined us around 3pm on  on Tuesday... and guess what?  ... the ruddy river Calder was doing it's thing again...  - ergo, we only got as far as Alftofts (again) and spent the night at Woodnook lock.



Now whilst it doesn't LOOK a lot - we know that travelling downstream when it's in the red is not a good idea... ok, we'd probably be ok but IN the event of something going wrong, there'd be no insurance... SO we waited... thinking "it's only an inch... HOW long can it take?

The answer to that question is 26 hours!!!  - The annoying thing about it was we'd planned to spend 2 nights in Leeds and had to change the plan.

By about 4pm on the 2nd day, the level had dropped into the Yellow so we got on to the river and set off towards the safety of Lemonroyd - it had been particularly frustrating because I kept getting the emails from crt, telling me that the Aire and Calder mainline was open, Doncaster aqueduct was open, the flood locks on the Calder and Hebble were open etc. etc.  The final insult was when they sent the "Leeds lock is open" one- ... grrr... of course it is because of the new weir which lets water through quickly and sends the problem DOWNSTREAM.... ADD to that the combination of the Calder going into the Aire  and THEN Castleford weir slowing things down further, the levels at Faires hill take AGES to fall.

Anyway - we got through Lemonroyd and on to Woodlesford for the night.

THIS morning, it was drizzly and not exactly nice boating weather (I suppose you could say it was TYPICAL boating weather) but we made good time into Leeds and topped up the water, emptied the crew loo and had showers. 

Alan took the helm for the first leg -turns out he'd been a narrow boater for 40 years and it was like riding a bike...  

SPEAKING (well writing of which) when in Leeds whilst the initial plan had been for Alan to head off to the Armouries museum, that changed so we all met up with our friend Richard who gave us an old bike he no longer uses...  the sad part to THAT tail being that the day BEFORE, his "good" bike had been stolen in broad daylight.  We of course offered not to take this one but he was adamant it's fine as he found it difficult to ride.  

It's certainly superior to the one WE had stolen last week - it's just a bit "big" for Andy's little legs to manage... even IF his gonads had gone down enough to do so - which btw, they haven't very much...

Hey ho - from Tuesday he can have a few days resting in bed again before we begin the next part of our journey with "nurse" Patty.

BEFORE then however, tomorrow we'll have an early start from Granary Wharf to get through the bad-lands (although in our experience they've not BEEN badlands) and aim to end the day around Rodley.  That said, we HAVE heard a few rumours today of Ropes being cut and mooring pins being stolen in Apperley bridge of late... we'll see!

Until next time...





1 comment:

Pip and Mick said...

26 hours! That's nothing. We've been waiting 12 days for the Severn to go down. We've now given up and are going the long way round to Worcester instead. Hoping that the river will have shrunk when we get there so that we can get to Gloucester.
Enjoy the L&L, it's my favourite.
Pip NB Oleanna