Whilst nattering to a local boater, I'd been warned about the shelf on the left but - confident our big fenders would keep us far enough out, ignored the advice not to moor there...
As predicted I woke up in the middle of the night feeling quite slopey ... ergo, a trip outside in my undies was required to loosen the ropes to quite an extent and push the boat out further... SO far in fact, that I couldn't leap back on easily and ended up having to pull it back in by the rope, totter on the roof for the pole and then push it back out again... I'm sure someone in one of the houses will have seen me and thought 'what a plonker' (or something a bit stronger).
NO matter - by morning I noticed we weren't the only ones to have been caught out - this hire boat was wedged firmly on it.
We decided to move on a bit and accompanied another boat doing the same - sharing swing bridges and got as far as Keighley before we decided to stop... actually that's not quite true - we saw several lovely stopping areas, with views across Airedale but NONE of them had enough water in for us to be able to pull in. In fact, we got stuck a couple of times trying. Hey ho. AS it happened, we ended up on the visitor moorings not far from the Marquis of Granby pub - next door to a fruit and veg shop.
The view wasn't very nice but the towpath DID include a fair number of friendly/chatty dog walkers... we fell in love wtih this one (the dog not the walker) and whilst she did tell us the breed, we can't remember... he was a lovely fella - took to Andy easily but me less so as I'd been banging mooring pins in when they walked past.
Once all the laundry was done we sat down and opened a bottle ( Lidl's finest - a £9.99 bottle of their champagne... really quite nice for the money ) to celebrate having completed out FIRST full week with guests on board and the realisation of the long held dream to do it.
Content with how marvellous we are, a plan was hatched to walk into town and find Asda ... we'd seen it in the distance when we did the last swing bridge... that turned into a 1.2 mile hike BACK up hill (on return that is) from said store, carrying 12 bottles of their new budget wine range... it's very drinkable but carrying them back to the boat was thirsty work... by the time we got back, we'd lost a couple in transit 😈
After a night in Keighley, we set off back towards the Bingley locks, stopping before hand to fill up with water (Again) ... it's amazing how much water 4 loads of washing and a few showers uses up. You take it for granted when you know where water points are - THIS one we stopped at, isn't in Nicholson's but is in Pearson's... Strange...
Descending Bingley we met the same lock keeper that had brought us up so skilfully on Monday... nice chap and at the bottom of the 5 I passed him up a bottle of wine as a thank you - not realising he would also be doing the 3 too...I'd put another bottle a side to give to that one but with it being him, it'd seem a bit too much - he can have it on the way up next week when we return with our next guest.
We ended the day in Saltaire (well just out of) as once again, we're struggling to get close enough in - annoying the visitor moorings where we COULD fit in easily are limited to just 6 hours which isn't helpful!
Until next time...
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