Slow travel

Lincolnshire- all we knew was Robin Hood cavorted here with Marion in a forest, avoiding the bad sheriff. Our route from Yorkshire followed the Ouse, Aire and Don, before depositing us on the R Trent, to navigate upstream and SW. Some 30 miles south of where we joined the incoming tide, we turned east, following the Fossdyke Navigation some 11 miles to Lincoln. A charming old city, home to Celts, Romans, Normans, and now us for a week. Hopefully we won't be as much trouble as some of them were. The cathedral and castle perch naturally high above the river, mediaeval cobbled lanes wreathing the hill, tumbling down to the Brayford Pool, a large inland harbour. For centuries boats sailed  from here to the Wash and beyond, trade including wool, flax, linen, limestone. Now a fine haven for recreational boaters, swans, canada geese, tourists. The swans and geese take parenting seriously, hissing and menacing any folk straying too closely to their families. Mooring in the Pool we are...

29/5/2019 We marshall at the head of the  Keadby lock that descends to the Trent, some 9 miles upstream from its junction with the Ouse.  The keepers of these tidal locks are invariably characters- Kenny, Mark, Neil are in our contacts' list. At each lock the keeper notes your boat's name, and your destination lock. If you don't make it there, they can raise the alarm. A useful safeguard. If you get into trouble, you can ring the keeper. It is raining as we wait for the incoming tide to reach a height which allows egress from the lock. We wear waterproof pants, coats, and life jackets. The boat's anchor accessible in the bows. Excited, nervous (me), chafing to get on with it. An expected four and a half hours and 30 miles to Torksey, the tidal lock upstream, leading to Lincoln on the Fossdyke Navigation ( our term for a labourer, 'navvy', comes from the men who built the canals or 'navigations'). The boats stacking into the lock. In the lock...

23/5/2019 Yesterday we marshalled with 3 white fibre glass cruisers and another narrowboat in the big lock east of York, which deposits you onto the tidal Ouse, 35 miles from the North Sea. Miss the lock at Selby, 15 miles downstream, next stop ??? Both of us are wearing life jackets. In the lock, all craft rope bow and stern to the vertical rails in the lock walls, holding steady while the lock empties. As the lock gates open,  the cruisers leave first, as being lighter they are generally faster than narrowboats. Initially the rising tide seems OK, the boat making good headway. Then the river narrows, flotsam including 3m by 40cm logs, move upstream towards us, our boat weaving between, mostly. The odd thunk as the hull crunches into a log.  With the narrower river, the effect of the tide intensifies, and we are making very slow headway. This is a much fiercer tide than we've ever experienced. Then the tide turns, and our speed goes from barely walking pace to an unaccust...

22/5/2019 A week in York, moored against the Museum Gardens. |Fine weather, dreaming ancient stones, walking the walls, relatives and friends visiting.  Photo above taken late evening from our kitchen window.  Henrietta, an European eagle owl, with another bird!  My last coffee in York, at our fave little cafe. Kitchen bench with irises.

14/5/2019 We left the Calder at Castleford, it of the roving bridge, where the Aire drops in from Leeds. East on the Aire, a lazy coastal plain river, winding through farmland, past cooling towers, chemical works, oil refineries. Where the Aire makes a final dawdle to the Humber estuary, the short Selby canal branches north, to join the Ouse. This is York's Ouse, not the southern Great and Little Ouses, they of the Cambridge area. At the great tidal lock at Selby, one books a passage to launch out on to a rising tide, and belt NW to the even greater lock at Naburn, about 5 miles downstream from York. From there, only the erratic rise and fall of the river a challenge, as most of the rain that falls on the Yorkshire Dales drains out to the North Sea via the Ouse. We are moored above Naburn overnight, to achieve a filling of the water tank and the draining of the septic tank. The latter is needed every 2 weeks approximately with 2 aboard, and the water tank weekly. These large ...

11/5/2019 Under several Acts of Parliament an individual can gift property - land, art work, archival material- to the National Trust and to other institutions, in lieu of tax, including inheritance tax. As travellers we seek out NT properties, enjoying the exceptional collections, structures, landscapes they provide. Today we visited Nostell Priory, a 15 min bus ride from Wakefield. It came into the hands of the NT in 1954 (?), in lieu of inheritance tax. A dreamy lovely 300 acre environment, 18th C mansion, huge walled garden (with rhubarb). Interesting to visit on the day we hear of Labor's policy of increased taxes on the wealthy- anathema no doubt to the haves whether in the 18th or 21st centuries. A most interesting head gardener, Mark, talked us through the life of rhubarb, how the Priory is part of the forced rhubarb triangle. We concluded with a sampling of rhubarb compotes, from 6 of the 19 varieties grown at Nostell, ranking them for flavour, appeal. An interestin...

11/6/2019 The Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield is a gem in a busy, messy town, traffic roaring through across the River Calder and the canal, ignoring the gallery on one side, and a rare bridge chapel on the other (have read that only 4 such remain in the UK). Ms Hepworth told an interviewer that her early travels as a child round west Yorkshire with her shire engineer dad, inspecting the roads and bridges of the county, embedded in her a love of the shapes, forms of the country. Her art, she said, was a response to this experience. George Eliot was similarly inspired by her travels with her father, a land agent or steward, with her insights into language, people and society of her time. It is a fascinating connection between art and literature, across different eras. Another fact new to us, was that Henry Moore grew up a few miles from Wakefield, in Castleford, and was a contemporary of Ms Hepworth. The Gallery contains his work too. An intriguing aspect of the gallery is...