Leaving Leeds - on to The Aire and Calder Canal

On leaving Leeds the first port of call was the Services in Leeds, just past Clarence Dock, a fifteen minute cruise. Despite the fast flowing water tap, it still took quite a while to fill the water tank, it was well down after our lay-over in Leeds. Leeds saw the end of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, as soon as we moved out of Lock 1 on the Aire and Calder Canal Serafina moved off quickly with the gentle current of the River Aire.

Cruising out of Leeds there were a couple of nice old bridges that caught our eye.

Leeds Bridge

Crown Point Bridge

We were heading for Castleford, the navigation was nice and wide and all the locks were electric so no heavy gates to open manually. Plenty of  room for everyone to spread out too!

We were hoping to pick up diesel at Castleford, we were getting rather low, under quarter of a tank. I did ring ahead and the word from the marina was that they were out of diesel and waiting for a delivery. When we arrived they were still waiting for the delivery. There were plenty of moorings available at Castleford although they were at Serafina's roof height so it was a bit of a climb up. Once tied up, Rachael and I headed into town to pick up a few things.

Next morning we headed off just in front of two other narrow boats, two minutes from the moorings to Bullholme Lock and Rachael set the lock for the three boats.

The navigation was long, wide and deep and Serafina handled very well.

The crews of the three boats shared the locks all the way to finish the day at some nice moorings just above Pollington Lock.

The next morning Rachael and I turned off on to the New Junction Canal as the other two boats carried on to spend a few days at Goole. This canal is almost a baby compared to many others, it was built in 1905. At this stage our Pearson's Canal Guides no longer covered the canal we were on so I had to break out an old Nicholson's Guide just to give us an indication of where we were heading. The New Junction Canal is 5 1/2 miles long and dead straight, a commercial canal with several heavy duty mooring points. We passed a coal mine that looks like it originally had its coal moved by barge, gauging by the moorings there. Only one lock on this length of this canal, surprisingly it was staffed, there were also several large electric lift and swing bridges.

We finished off the New Junction Canal with the Don Aqueduct and its guillotine gates, in case of flooding I suspect.

We rounded the sharp junction on to the Stainforth and Keadby Canal. It was going to be an early finish to cruising today so we took a rare lunch break before heading off again to our booked mooring at Stanilands Marina.

Before mooring the first thing on the agenda was to fill Serafina's diesel tanks. We filled both tanks and our back-up container, 161 litres (@ 0.75ppl domestic) later the stern was sitting much lower in the water. Having electric hook-up with the battery problems we are currently enduring was luxury as well. Serafina will be here for several days while we go touring in Scotland.