Wednesday 18th July

Millie liked Strawberry Island and made herself at home and was often found sunning herself on the pontoon – yes there was sun in Doncaster over the weekend! However she really liked last night’s mooring place and came in with a couple of mice – she has slept nearly all day obviously exhausted!
We left the New Junction Canal and made our way onto the Knottingley and Goole Canal. I had wanted to go through Goole and up the Ouse but Richard was rather concerned at that idea! I guess a narrowboat could well be dwarfed by the sea going ships in Goole! The canal is very straight and the landscape rather bleak with hardly any trees or hedges but at least the sun was shining J There were two huge locks to go through both of which are mechanized but we had to operate them ourselves. They are strange locks with more than one set of gates (only one set was in use) but I guess this is to let big boats through. We moored up for lunch and a big boat did go passed us – I wondered if I would ever see the end! Fortunately we were tied up to bollards otherwise mooring pins could easily have come out.
At Knottingley we turned onto the River Aire which wound its way for 6.5 miles, we couldn’t see much as the banks are quite high. We knew that the river had been in flood a few days ago but it looked so peaceful today however if you looked up the banks you could see the debris that had been brought down and how high the river had been.
At West Haddlesey we went through the flood lock and onto the Selby Canal. This canal is a stark contrast to what we have been used to with rich vegetation on both banks however this does mean that you can’t pull over and moor anywhere. The mooring place at the lock was full, the next one had a boat on it but fortunately it was third time lucky and we were able to moor up at Burn Bridge.
The weather today has been nice with lots of sunshine and blue sky with white fluffy clouds however there has been a strong but warm wind.