Mike Stevens' UK Inland Waterways Pages

TRIP REPORTS : THE FELIS CATUS II YEARS

A LONG SUMMER : May to October 1995

Part 3 : The main Summer cruise -
(b) Bingley & Saltaire.

We resume the story with the boat above Bingley Five Rise.

We woke up to find that our front mooring line had been tampered with and our barbecue (which we'd left out overnight to cool) had walked about 50 yards along the towpath. I took some photos while waiting for starting time. Just after 08:30 we set off down the 5-rise, renewed acquaintance with Barry the lock-keeper, whom I had met some years before at the Earls Court Boat show. He said the return trip to Saltaire should take about 5½ hours. We were locking with Willow, a local boat who were surprised we'd had trouble at last night's mooring. Barry helped us through the 3-rise as well, after which we tied up to rendezvous with our friend Grainne, who was joining us for a few days.

Bingley Five-Rise

The rendezvous achieved, we moved off again at 11:20. At the foot of Dowley Gap locks we picked up two ladies who had been misinformed about the times of the water bus service and needed a lift back to their car at Saltaire. Having arrived there, we stopped for a photographic wander round the village before lunch on board.

	Water-bus stop
Bingley Three-rise

Saltaire

Then we went on to Shipley and found somewhere to wind at a boatyard. On the way back through the Bingley 3-rise we had a bit of a problem with a ground paddle jammed partly open as we were in the bottom lock. Not a nice experience for me on the boat in the bottom of one of these very tall locks, with a fountain coming through a gate-paddle a long way above me. We then arrived slightly late at the 5-rise, but Barry worked us through nevertheless.

We went on to Granby Bridge moorings which we reached at 19:22. This is an official BW visitor mooring but not particularly scenic with a warehouse on the towpath side and suburbia opposite. We stopped here because we had seen from the boats moored here when we came past the day before that there was adequate depth, which wasn't the case in most other places with the levels down as they were at the time.