So when we originally booked with Shire Cruisers our plan was to tackle the South Pennine ring. We are an experienced boating family with 15 and 18 year old teenagers who are not averse to pushing a few locks, in fact the more locks the better. We will call this plan A. We discussed this with Nigel and got the go ahead. Winter comes and floods happen and the west side of the Huddersfield Narrow Canal develops a hole which likely will not be fixed by the time we travel. Hey ho onto plan B. We'll pootle around local canals go over to Manchester on the Rochdale and back, maybe go up the East side of the Huddersfield Narrow up to Slaithwaite. Cue driest spring in many years and our plans shift again as canals gradually shut down. That's fine we'll head towards Wakefield and beyond, then about 6 weeks before the trip CRT put a stoppage on Salterhebble guillotine lock, were we destined to spend 2 weeks travelling from Sowerby Bridge to Salterhebble and back? But no Nigel had managed to get the boats all down to Brighouse, what luck!

So we arrive to start our holiday in Brighouse, we've forgotten which plan we are on now. After an extensive induction we are off heading towards Wakefield. We cruise along the Calder and Hebble navigation all the way to the end at Fall Ings then continue onward on the Aire and Calder, the locks getting bigger as we go. We swap heavy lock beams for electrically powered locks that we look lost in. Our first destination is to get to Sheffield, on the way we pass the big Sand Barge that is carrying sand from Stanley Ferry to just south of Leeds, we'll meet it again later in our travels.

We turn down the New Junction canal following a little trip towards Goole for a bit, the New Junction canal is straight with lots of lift bridges and one lock. We made sure to book our passage through the Sheffield and Tinsley locks 24 hours in advance. We were pleasantly surprised cruising down the Don Valley as to how nice it was around Conisborough and Mexborough. We did pass our second commercial boat of the trip here the Exol Pride a big oil tanker. To do the Sheffield and Tinsley canal you need a lock keeper to unlock the gates and you need to moor up near Rotherham, here the canalscape gets a little more gritty, we managed to moor near Ickles lock, it was slightly noisy from the waste recycling plant but was safe. We met the lockkeeper the next morning for our trip into Sheffield, we made it up the flight in record time, a new PB for the lock keeper! Once up the locks the cruise into Sheffield was again a bit gritty but there are signs of regeneration happening. We had the afternoon to explore Sheffield before we headed back down the locks the next day.

So where to next, we've got a good week left of our holidays, we decide that our next destination should be Selby, but first we need to head towards Thorne to get a pump out. Pump out done in the rain and we head back up the New Junction Canal, it's more interesting than on the way down as the wind had picked up at one point we were caught in a vicious shower while doing a lift bridge. The wind was so bad that there were waves on the Aire and Calder canal! We continued on our way to Selby, the Selby canal is very shallow, it is pretty but very slow. As we arrived at the swing bridge into the basin CRT were just fixing it soon we were through and after filling with water and doing a tricky turn in the basin we went to explore the town which is well worth a visit.

Still we had time on our hands so we decided to head up to Leeds next, it was on this leg of trip we met our 3rd commercial boat, the massive Offroader, this is a huge beast of a boat that can take 16 articulated lorries off the roads in one load of cargo. The trip up to Leeds involves big locks but also a couple of places where they do rowing so we did have to avoid several small sculls on our way. Mooring in Leeds was at a premium mainly because the Leeds Liverpool was shut, we got the last space in Granary Wharf. We spent a morning exploring Leeds before turning around again to head back finally towards Sowerby Bridge (we had had word from Nigel that the Guillotine lock was now open). We again met the sand barge on the way back out of Leeds, it is good to see the waterways used for their intended purpose. All was going well until when going through Woodnook lock the gates failed and although we were out of the lock our CRT key was locked in the control panel so we had to wait for CRT to release it for us.

Soon we were back on manual locks, time to flex the muscles again. We had a brief stop in Wakefield to meet my parents for lunch then onwards we went. We decided to take a trip up the Dewsbury arm, just because, I wouldn't recommend, it was shallow and turning at the end was a very delicate task. All went well until we got to Brookfoot lock just outside Brighouse when we couldn't shut the gates. A poke around with the barge pole revealed something spongy in the way so another phone call to CRT. We had a ice cream while waiting for them to come from the handily located ice-cream van as it was very hot. CRT arrived with a big hook on a pole and managed to shift whatever it was, we are still not sure, and we were on our way. We are happy to report that Salterhebble guillotine worked perfectly and we made it back to Sowerby Bridge having had a good time. We were impressed with the support we had from CRT who were excellent every time we had to contact them. We also really liked the boat with its excellent storage solutions.

We still haven't done the South Pennine ring so maybe we will be back sometime to try and tackle it again.


The Spencer Family