River Boating, Bumps and Surprises

Castleford, Aire & Calder Navigation to Gateforth Landing, North of Paperhouse Bridge, Selby Canal, 16 miles 5 locks

A day of rivers today, and after yesterday's worries it was just lovely to be able to relax and zoom off down the river. It is amazing how high the river gets, we could see rubbish and bits of trees and twigs caught in the bridges some 10ft above us, goodness knows what the flow is like when it is that high!

I totally got the angles wrong coming out of one of the locks into the river, the landing stage to pick Vic up was terribly difficult, you almost had to go out of the lock and reverse back up the river to use the landing stage. Anyway after managing to pick him up, I caught the back of the boat on some ironwork jutting out taking off a bit of the paint I had painstaking put on in Braunston in May No harm was done though

We turned off the Aire & Calder on the River Aire itself to link up with the Selby Canal. I couldn't believe my eyes when round the corner came a speed boat! But there was more of a surprise, following the speedboat were two water skiiers!! It's a good job they didn't go wide, or they would have used No Problem as a jumping ramp!

We found a lovely quiet mooring between Paperhouse Bridge and the East Coast Mainline Railway Bridge to the envy of all those that passed. Fishing was excellent in the evening, and because it is so nice, we have decided to say here tomorrow too