The Leeds & Liverpool Canal
I've long imagined that cruising an English canal would be an idilic meander through farm and field but I have just taken my third Valium for the day. Once you have almost mastered opening, navigating and closing all the swing bridges, you come to the locks, our first being the Bingley Five-Rise which made me pack some serious shit. This is the steepest set of locks in the UK with a gradient of 1:5 and a 20m rise or fall, depending on which way you're going.
Thank Gough Almighty there was a lock keeper to quite literally step me through the procedure but I was otherwise on my own. Peter was busy helping him with his core business of winding windlasses to release or contain water then pushing enormous paddles to open or close the locks. Lin walked Piper the wee Westie down the side, which was a wise move. As the 20m long boat and I sank down each lock in turn I experienced a glimpse of burial. Oranges! I thought, There should be oranges! Of course, coming back was Lazarus Rising, especially on a Sunday with nearby church bells peeling more joyously than I have ever before heard.
Having exited the last of the five locks there is less than a kilometre till you come upon three more. These were manned by a lock keeper who's holy name we bless. He told us about a mooring place a few km ahead, right beside a pub and just above an unmanned two-step lock and a single one beyond. All up, this idilic parking place was just 30 minutes walk from our ultimate destination of Saltaire. It also boasted a winding hole which is a place where you turn canal boats around, packing more shit as you go.
The problem with performing manoeuvres at the top of locks, in them or beside pubs, is that you draw a crowd, completely regardless of your desire to do so. This tends to increase the degree of difficulty exponentially. It was only on the way back up again, when I was juggling between forward and reverse to stop the front of the boat being swamped by the cascade of lock water that it occurred to me I'd developed a whole new skill set which I am unlikely to ever use again.
We had three night on the canal all up. The first we were moored all by ourselves on an idilic stretch after running aground three or four times whilst looking for a spot. I passed on the sauv blanc that night and went straight to the red followed by port.
Our next night was by the pub but I was so buggered from the locks and then our canal side walk to and fro Saltaire that all I could do was down a small scampi and chips with a couple of beers and then hit the bunk.
The final night was in the village of Lower Bradley, within sprinting distance of our start and return point since we had to have the boat back by 9.00am. We were end to end with a good many others who were there for the same reason People who travel canals are a happy and supportive lot though, willing to share a mourning or help you with a bridge and nobody laughed at a lock or winding hole - at least not that I saw. In fact a few said, "Not bad for an Australian." If you've ever thought of giving it a go, do so.
Saltaire
Having started out at Skipton, our destination was Saltaire which is a Victorian model village established by Sir Titus Salt as something of a workers' utopian community. He built a substantial estate of stone terrace houses for the workers employed at his five wool mills and provided them with a school, hospital, library and a multitude of luxuries unknown to the working class of the day including plumbing. The price was abstinence from alcohol or at least moderation. Of course things have changed and there is now a bar in the main street that's called Don't Tell Titus.
Unfortunately there was a festival on the day we went to Saltaire and you could hardly move for merry makers but we had a good look about nevertheless. The stone workers' terraces are still there as is the church and Titus' other substantial structures, all faithfully preserved. The mills have been converted to apartments but the essence of the town is still well intact.
The Yorkshire Dales
We travelled back to Durham through the Yorkshire Dales National Park which is a part of the world that's particularly pleasing to the eye, even amidst the rain and mist. Unfortunately there was a little too much of the moist stuff to make it worthwhile to stop and ramble, especially given that I have brought back the cold that Peter took out on the canal. The Dales are on the list for next time.
National Parks are a fairly recent innovation in the UK, unlike Australia and the US where they seem to have been around forever. In fact, as much as America would like to claim Yellowstone as a first, it was actually Royal National Park just south of of Sydney by a full 12 months
British National Parks are not the wilderness areas we have in the New World. They are working tracts of countryside that have been recognised for their particular significance so people continue to live, work and farm throughout the parks which are primarily private holdings. Development is, however, closely monitored and kept within strict guidelines.
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