Thursday 22 July 2010

Wakefield and Stanley Ferry




Day 5 (full day 4) is our furthest "out" day as we head on down the Calder and Hebble determined to reach Wakefield, hoping that, like Leeds it will have lots of new canal-facing developments, boater-friendly facilities and attractive moorings. Many places do - the Aspley Basin in Huddersfield, for example, or Hebden Bridge and Todmorden up the Rochdale Canal. Wakefield is a sorry disappointment.Plenty of development on the waterfront but all the barren fronts of residential blocks - no place to moor, no canal-facing pubs. Even the Waterways facilities in the guide book have been built over and the so called "visitor moorings" are just a load of mooring rings between the canal and a building site fence.
Unable to take on vital water we are forced on down the canal another half hour to boater-haven "Stanley Ferry". Here we water up and then spin the boat round to moor up for lunch pointing, sadly, back towards "home". Lunched up, we head back upstream, taking some of the river stretches at getting on for full throttle (it's still only about 5 knots but you get a nice V-bow-wave from the snub bows) and eventually mooring up right by the Bingley Arms again. How does that keep happening?
This post though, is being written after the event - this happened on the 13th. Back in the real world it's late July in Kent and the allotment is giving of its gooseberries (loads of fun top and tailing them for jam) and red currants (more fun de-strigging them), climbing French beans, courgettes and spring onions, and the garden is giving us ripe black cherries.
Deefs

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