Onwards & Downwards!

I arrived back at the marina yesterday in glorious sunshine.  I have had a busy week, visiting family, going home and attending a friends wedding on Saturday.  It was great to catch up with family and the wedding was lovely although yesterdays sunshine could have showed up at the wedding, although the bride and groom didn't seem to care, they were so happy and had a fabulous day despite what the weather was doing.

Alison & Mark

(Mr & Mrs Adams!)

We paid our dues at the marina this morning (extremely reasonable if you are in the area), and John reversed out of our mooring, it was tight as we needed to turn and the boat at the side was 65' and his bow was across the canal, but with some excellent reversing and forward movements we were out and heading in the right direction.  We cruised through the outskirts of Barnoldswick and onto Greenberfield locks, these locks start our decent to Leeds. Following these locks the canal starts to snake around the hills, at one point we were heading west but across the valley could see a canal bridge to the east, we went west for a while then went around a hairpin bend and continued east towards the bridge we had seen!  We descended the six locks at Bank Newton, and continued into Gargrave where we have moored for the evening.

We have both agreed that this has to be the most scenic days cruising we have ever done, the views in any direction are just stunning and our camera really doesn't do them justice.

Back into the swing of the locks (well I have had a week off)

We are going to the left of the picture and the bridge in the

 centre of the picture took us about 20 minutes to reach

John has been busy whilst I have been away doing various little jobs.  He has managed to bring the cratch board back into some sort of line, we have had them clamped, with the cratch cover  not on properly, but he has managed to get some coach bolts in now and remove the clamps so we can have the cratch cover back on again.  We hope that this will prevent any further movement/warping.

8 miles 12 locks