Castleford

Here I am Rune

Distance 10.7 miles

Total 1288 Locks 70 Tunnels

Running total mileage 1806.4 miles 

We actually made better progress today than I was expecting and have moored for the night at Castleford. Travelling on a deeper river does enable us to go a bit quicker than when we are scraping along the bottom of a shallow canal and checking the satnav today we were going at about 4.8mph down the river so we got here fairly quickly.

Final view of the Leeds Liverpool Canal (River Aire coming in from the right)

We initially moored nearer to the sanitary station but then it seemed we were at the back of a large petrol storage area and the guy on the boat behind decided to light up his barbecue so we’ve move a bit further away from the potential conflagration!

Today has been the first day since we passed through Leigh that we have been off the Leeds Liverpool canal, and what a bonus it was using 200 foot locks rather than the rather cramped (for a 60 foot boat) 64 foot locks of the Leeds Liverpool. In terms of our lock count, we got a couple of ‘freebies’ today since both Knostrop and Castleford Junction Lock aren’t proper locks in the true sense of the word since they are just flood locks which are closed if the river goes into flood to prevent it flooding the canal.

Proper 'Man sized' locks!

Since we are further than anticipated today we may well get further tomorrow, possibly as far as Heck Hall Marina (about 12 miles). That would leave us about 8.5 miles to Rawcliffe Bridge and 10.5 miles to Goole which should be a comfortable day’s trip (without any mishaps!).