Stormy weather!

Filling one of the Bingley 3 Rise, the boats are a long way down.

Bottom of Bingley 5 Rise

Moving on from Shipley our next stop was at Saltaire.  This is a village, much like Bournville, which was built for the mill workers by Sir Titus Salt.  He was so appalled by his workers living conditions that he built a whole village for them to live in.  The only thing missing was a pub as he wanted sober workers! Wednesday last was a busy day for us.  A short cruise brought us to Bingley.  A larger place than we were expecting found the lovely Butter Market in the town and had a look around the Damart  Factory shop.  No bargains there!  Then after lunch it was time for the locks.        Quite famous in the canal world. First the Bingley 3 Rise, closely followed by the Bingley 5 Rise.  We were very lucky to be joined by another boat.  The 3 had a lock keeper, then when we got to the 5 there were 3 of them, so I hopped back on board and came up on Falcon with Paul.

Bottom of the lock!

Not only are there quite a few locks on the Leeds and Liverpool, when you get to a reasonably lock free stretch there are swing bridges!  Most fairly easy to move, but a couple were almost impossible.  Luckily on the whole I was able to enlist the help of a dog walker or gongoozler!
From the top of Bingley to Skipton there were 15 opening bridges!  There were some other boats about, so I didn't have to do work them all.On Friday we went for a walk around Skipton, some lovely old building and alleyways.  After lunch we thought we would move on despite the wind.  That was a mistake, we managed the first 2 swing bridges, but when we got to the third I got it open, but Paul couldn't get the boat off the bank because the wind was just blowing him back!  In the end I knocked on the farmers door and he allowed us to spend the night on his bank.

As it says on the post, moored at Skipton

We were up and moving just after 8 on Saturday morning through the bridge with no problems.  On towards Gargrave where we stopped for lunch and ended up staying the night as the wind had got up again.  We were trying to press on to reach Barnoldswick for Monday to leave Falcon in the marina there while we have some time away visiting various family members, but not as far as Plymouth.  So  we had another busy day on Sunday, leaving just 3 locks for Monday and into the marina.          

East Marton double bridge

Sunday we had the last 3 locks of the Gargrave flight followed by the 6 locks at Bank Newton mooring at East Marton.  When we left on Monday morning we went through the double bridge.  The solution when a bigger road bridge was needed.

Now we are in Taunton with Paul's cousin, Alison.  At the weekend we are off to the Isle of Wight to meet up with Lorraine and family, then off to Bristol to see my cousin, Carole.

Other side of double bridge