Country Show and heading for The Trent

30th and 31st July - Moored at Castleford - Today - Castleford to Pollington, Aire & Calder Navigation, 14.5 miles 4 locks

On Friday I went into Castleford to check on the bus routes to the Yorkshire Country Show, and also to stock up on meat for the freezer. I found a large indoor market with plenty of butchers to choose from, and had a long brouse round before returning. Spent a lovely afternoon fishing and caught quite a few including a chub which weighed 1lb 3oz and another smaller one. I have only ever caught one chub before. I was surprised the fishing was so good with all the heavy river traffic going up and down.

We enjoyed the show very much the following day, sheep dog demonstrations was Lucy's favourite to watch, and you could almost see in her face that she wanted a go at herding the ducks, used for the demonstration, in and out of the various gates. The guy had won 'One Man and his Dog' and it was a pleasure to see how he worked with his dogs. We watched falconry, gun dog and dogs working with hawks. Also we saw the County Mounted Games Championship, with a very good team from Warwickshire winning. This brought back memories as Wendie was in the Hampshire Team for this event. Horseball was also an event in the main arena, played with a football in a sort of string harness, 4 riders and horses a side, and the hardest bit was picking it off the floor, some skill sure was involved in that!

Managed to buy ourselves some 'muckers' - hooray, the ones we had were just about worn out after 8 years, and we got them at a very good price too!

Last night when we returned we collected a Tesco delivery, but so many errors in the order I had to do another one for delivery here tomorrow morning, hope it isn't from the same outlet!

Today we left Castleford, and started to head in the direction of the River Trent. The Aire & Calder Navigation is very wide indeed, probably needs to be with these huge barges up and down from Goole.

It was nice to actually see the countryside again after being hemmed in by high banks on the rivers of late. The Kellingley Colliery is absolutely huge and is obviously still distributing coal in a big way, we counted over 100 rail wagons in the sidings there, pity none is taken by canal now though.

The weather this morning was very cold and damp, and we were wearing jumpers and coats, but this afternoon it has been very sunny, and very warm, and STILL the fishing is good!