Friday 16th June 2017

Lots of swing bridges today. Luckily many of them were mechanised but this involves working out what to do from a vast array of buttons on the control panel. One of the locks had a swing bridge in the middle of it and you had to work 3 control panels to work the lock and the bridge. Lots of walking backwards and forwards and no time for a picture as you are very conscious of the traffic waiting to cross the canal whilst all they can see is you standing at a console with your finger pressing a button! I did manage these pictures of a lift bridge in operation.

We crossed the river Don at one point via an aqueduct with guillotine gates at either end.

Eventually it was time to turn towards Leeds and we must remember to keep the speed down!!

Owl nesting boxes have been placed all along this stretch.

Most of today's route seemed to consist of very long straight stretches which we thought would be boring but there were so many bridges to deal with that we never had a dull moment. 

We didn't see any commercial traffic but the locks are certainly built for large craft as our boat was dwarfed by the size of this one.

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Canal and River Trust (CRT) work boats - not doing much work!

We passed an old flour mill which had a new lease of life holding masts for the techno age. Then when we went a little further on and looked back we could see that a new mill had been built behind it.

Kellingley colliery was closed in Dec. 2015. It was the last deep pit to be closed in the UK. There is still thought to be 30million tonnes of untouched coal underground. The site will be developed for housing in a few years and it has a bank of solar panels on the land at the moment. Old and new energy sources side by side.

The pylons are pretty impressive indicating how much energy is produced in this part of the country.

So, we are currently in Knottingley and hope to reach Leeds tomorrow. Graham is threatening to phone the weather forecasters as the heatwave promised DID NOT materialise!