Boat Jam at Skipton.

3 Locks, 5 Miles, 4 Swing bridges. Now moored at Skipton.

Beautiful Yorkshire Dales

After yesterdays atrocious weather which was caused by the remnants of Hurricane “Bill” coming in off the Atlantic, today was a total contrast. Sunshine  and blue sky, perfect cruising weather.  We cruised on to Skipton with Jack and Kit on Nb Waterwych II which made the double locks easier.The idea with the swing bridges was to play leap frog and take it in turns which we did with the first two but at the third bridge there were 3 boats heading in the opposite direction and they had got there first. Needless to say that the unlucky crew had rather a long wait while 5 boats passed through.

At swing bridge 176 things got rather hectic, Dot got the job of opening the bridge to allow Waterwych and Gypsy Rover through and that was as far as we got. Ahead of us were moored boats on both sides and a wide beam cruise boat blocking the channel. We both pulled into the bank to allow the cruise boat through but in the mean time 2 more boats had caught up with us and were trying to get through the swing bridge while it was still open. These boats had to back off to allow the cruise boat through.

This is Skipton.  Note the satellite dishes!

All this time and Dot still had the bridge open and quite a crowd of pedestrians had gathered on both sides waiting to cross the canal. Luckily there is not much vehicular traffic use this bridge. Eventually all 6 boats got through and Dot was able to close the bridge but the pedestrians didn’t help, just starting walking onto the bridge while she was trying to close it making it difficult to handle. After all this we were lucky to to find a 14 day mooring close by recently vacated by one of the boats through the swing bridge.

After lunch we walked into town along the towpath and moorings were fairly full all the way through town so we were quite lucky to find one where we did.  We will be staying here for a while but Waterwych will be carrying on in a day or two as they have a commitment in Sheffield. Jack and Kit have been trying to persuade us to carry on to Leeds with them but unfortunately that doesn’t fit in with our plans at present.

1810 locks, 3714 miles, 68 tunnels, 90 swing bridges and 53 lift bridges since Nov 2006