Leeds Centre and the River Aire

Granary Basin, Leeds to Castleford, Aire & Calder Navigation, 10 miles 6 locks

We spent two days in Leeds, and I was very impressed indeed. I have never seen so many shops, so many alley ways and more shops, everywhere you looked there were shops! The first day we spent wandering around the main city centre, not bothering if we got lost which we did a few times, had lunch at a very smart Weathersoons pub converted from a bank. On the second day we visited the market, wow, so huge, there were about 700 stalls both inside and out, we had aching legs after a walk round that, and we never got to see it all! We then went to the Victorian Quarter, a couple of really nice indoor arcades with designer shops and little cafes through the middle. The roof was all stained glass, and the shop fronts victorian, quiet superb.

Last night we had some problems with the youths of Leeds, and I chased one lot off before realising that they had untied one of our ropes, they had already untied a lot of the boats in the wharf, then another group attempted to take the bikes off the roof of a hireboat. I screamed at them to pack it in, and that seemed to do the trick, caught in mid air as they ran to grab the bikes! So we decided to leave Leeds this afternoon and make our way to Castleford for an evening stop. On leaving Leeds the heavens opened, and the rain continued steadily for a couple of hours......

I was apprehensive about the River Aire, not being on there before, but after working out how to operate the Leeds Lock, the first mechanical one on the Aire, we were both soon relaxing and enjoying the trip down the river. It was as wide as the Thames, but the levels were very low, and there was little flow, which suited me!

The locks were absolutely huge, and Lemonroyde Lock was 13'6", I felt very lonely in there when we went down! The river banks were covered in wild flowers of all kinds, and there was a lot of wild life on the river, we counted 8 herons on our trip and there were many terns as well as dippers. The rain eased towards the evening, and by the time we went through Castleford Flood Lock for our evening mooring it had turned into a cloudless evening sky.