The Tappin' o' the Feets

Day 6 (Full day 5) and we're heading back up stream towards Sowerby Bridge, alternating canal with River Calder. The river level is low, so the flood locks upstream of each canal stretch are all open and you can glide straight from canal to river unhindered (with a glance over your shoulder at the big but benign and peaceful (at low-river!) weirs (see pic) with their rather worryingly strong and serious looking string of massive boat-catching floats. This pic also has the motorway in the background (M62 I think).

The rain has stopped now and there's a kingfisher to greet Dad and we dogs when we first break surface for a pee. Despite many being spotted from the boat(s) through the years, Mum has never actually been in the right place and right time to see one, so there is now a long-standing joke in the family that she thinks they are mythical creatures.

The Terry Pratchell "Feegles" stuff is now so ingrained in this holiday's culture that at one point J-M (10) shouts down to Dad in the lock chamber to throw up a rope. Dad has not done so because we are coming up as a pair of boats in this one and Dad thinks we are so well wedged we barely need ropes. But when he looks back up at Jorja she is doing the full works 'tapping o' the feets, pursing o' the lips and folding o' the arms'. When he's finished laughing (along with everyone else), he gives in, quailing "Och... waily waily waily!" and chucks up a rope. Nice one J-M!

We drive on by up past the Dewsbury Arm, stop for food at the canal-side LIDL supermarket in Mirfield and spot a heron standing incongruously on top of a lamp post like some kind of vulture, by the Huddersfield Canal entrance. At 5pm ish a huge black cloud rolls in and thunder is heard. Mum suggests a rapid moor up. dad claims not to have realised how time was flying by. They moor and retreat inside the boat just as the heavens open. Everybody makes Mum do her Feegles thing again in a sort of "Previously on Wintersmith" like they do on TV before handing the book on to the next reader (Mr S).

But now, in real-time, it's Friday evening, so have a good weekend

Deefski