Dewsbury and Horbury

Today is our day for rain. We always seem to get one. Everyone except essential hands (that'll be Dad, Mr and Mrs S then!) retreat into the boat and do indoor stuff. Dad, Mrs S and Mr S don ponchos and wet weather gear and move the boat anyway. Dad's poncho is a bit old by now and turns out to be not as waterproof as previously, so by lunchtime Dad's shoulders are very wet and he is shivering, so it's good to get in at lunchtime and get changed.

We continue down stream through Mirfield and Ravensthorpe. At Thornhill Double Locks we're tempted off up the "Dewsbury Arm" (of the canal) by guide-book descriptions of Mosques and Minarets - we are expecting a Turkish skyline. No such luck. The guide book is rather old and the canal is little wider than a drainage ditch, being enchroached from both sides by reeds, and at the terminus is a marina with just enough room to turn the 56 foot boat, a huge builders merchants selling slabs and concrete stuff, and a new housing estate most of which has the ground floor boarded up. Friendly locals, but of Mosques and Minarets we see none. Mum and the girls head for the supermarket for more provisions.

Back aboard and now drying out as the sun breaks through we head for Horbury where we moor in sight of the Bingley Arms, purveyor of fine Black Sheep beers (not that had any sway in where to moor, honest).

More Terry Pratchett tonight, and now the girls are enjoying the Feegles' antics re explaining their misdemeanours to their women when they get back indoors from the latest swearing-stealing-drinking-fighting outing. TP has it that the Feegles are all very brave when they're out doing man-stuff, but then they are faced with the wrath of "her indoors" pursing her lips (Och Noooo! No' the purrrrsin' o' the lips!), folding her arms (Nooo the foldin' o' the arrrms!") and a-tapping of her feet (Och - the tappin' o' the feets!) and demanding "There had better be a really good explanation for you being this late!" (Ochhh.... no the explainin' - Arrghhh Waily Waily Waily!) and so on. All good fun, and Mum doing all this in a superb Scottish accent, has the whole crew laughing and talking in Scottish

Mad

Deefski

Aspley and Battyeford

And so on up the Huddersfield broad canal as far as that fair city which proves, in the form of Aspley Basin, to have a superb boat-friendly, canal-facing centre where we can turn around, moor up, refill with water and buy provisions. There's a stiff breeze blowing, sometimes across the canal, sometimes straight at us down the cut. Dad says this makes helming more interesting as you have to crab down the canal at an angle, and any low speed stuff around locks has you going sideways. Didn't look that difficult to me! Just an excuse to hang onto the helm as far as we could see!

We moor for the night near Battyeford having made our way back down the HBC and then turned right out of the Calder into the eastbound bit of canal. It's here that I allegedly fell in, trying to do a misjudged leap from bank to fore-deck and slipping short, plopping straight in. It is alleged I then swam very professionally forward about 10 feet to a low bit of bank where Dad could haul me out by the collar. As I said, though, no photo's to prove that.

The humans have been enjoying getting into reading chunks of Terry Pratchett books to the girls at bedtime. The girls can, of course, read quite happily for themselves, but this has become a good family entertainment. The humans are taking it in turns and are enjoying the Scottish voices of Pratchett's fictional swearing-fighting-drinking-thieving "pictsies", the Nac Mac Feegles. If that means nothing to you then grab a copy of Terry Pratchett's "Hat Full of Sky" or "Wintersmith". Great fun!

Deefski

On downstream (day 2)

Mum and Dad muster early, still being a bit in work-mode, but the Silverwoods are recovering from their over night ferry which featured Toddler-R deciding to tantrum instead of sleeping, so they're all a bit wiped. My pics today are of two special features of the holiday. Those who know us will know of the connection to a well known Supermarket, so here's a nice pic of the good ship Northumberland moored alongside the said shop in Brighouse.

Those who know Mr S will know of his avid fan-dom of Liverpool FC. Mum and Dad thought it'd be fun to get hold of a "Calder and Hebble hand-spike" (a chunk of hardwood used to open the ground paddles on some of the C+HN locks) in advance of the holiday and paint it up in Liverpool colours, decorate it with stickers and present it to Mr S st the first lock. It went down well. Mr S loved it!

And so, we tootle gently down stream, everyone falling into the pleasant regime from last year, Dad doing most of the helming (occasionally ousted by keen trainee helmers of all ages), with Mr S loving his lock-wrangling assisted by any combination of Mum, Mrs S, Em-J, J-M and M. We chug down to Brighouse where we stop for a major provisioning shop (and are witness to a racist "incident" which we are determined to stay out of). On down to Cooper Bridge, alternating sections of canal with the River Calder, where we divert off to check out Huddesfield's Aspley Basin. Brilliant place with lots of canal-side facilities and canal-facing pubs etc.

Just out of Huddersfield we moor up near Deighton in a lovely rural stretch where dogs and children can safely explore the tow path. We are really starting to enjoy this holiday now.

Deefski

Captain's Log... Day 1

Day 1 of our adventure, and this is just arriving. Mum and Dad are up early and doing last minute packing and loading the car. This always makes us a bit anxious, as we dogs both think we are about to be abandonned; we don't really trust things to be OK until we are ourselves loaded into the car along with our bowls, food, collars, leads and treats. Mum and Dad have a bit of a stressed drive up the A1 (should have taken the M1 but the M25 was a bit nightmarish so we escaped up the M11).

We arrive at the hire-base of Sowerby Bridge where we are known to be experienced and competent crew, so we get the slightly abridged version of the briefing and the walk through the boat explaining boilers, anchors, cookers etc. We find that the pound above Tuel Lane lock is very low and not passable till the Waterways boys can rig up a pump to fill it, so we opt to start with a run down stream to Salterhebble.

That's it for cruising the first day - we are determined to make this a relaxing holiday, so no hard-charging lock-upon-lock stuff. We cruise the 45 minute pound to Salterhebble and then drop down through the 2 locks into the basin and moor up for a chilled out evening of unpacking, eating, chatting, re-acquainting, drinking and exploring. Cruising proper starts tomorrow.

Incidentally, this blog has now passed the 10,000 views landmark.

Deefski

Avast There!

We are back, Dear Reader, and with you again. Did you miss us? We have been on hols in Yorkshire, hiring a narrow boat from Shire Cruisers in Sowerby Bridge (this time the good ship "Northumberland") for a week's worth of cruising the inland waterways of Yorkshire. As ever this is a family event, so we take the Silverwoods from Ireland along with us, so we are 4 adults (Mum, Dad and Mr+Mrs S), 4 childrens (Em-J (12), J-M (10), M (4) and toddler R (2)) plus we two dogs, all in a 56 foot boat.

It's all excellent fun and we all survived, all be it there were rumours that I might have gone for total immersion baptism at one stage, but there are no photos to prove it. More on this over the next few days is "Captain's Log" format as last year, but for now a taster. 2 pictures - first of Dad manouvring in the Brighouse Basin lashed stern-to-stern and bow-to-bow to an old dead house-boat named Peppa who had "died" one lock down and needed an assist up to the top level. The second is myself (l) and the H(r) on the quayside in Hudderseild's Aspley Basin.

More tomorrow

Deefski

Unveiling

Here it is, then, the Denis N Memorial Sundial, formally unveiled yesterday at a nice wine-and-nibbles "do" laid on by Mum in the garden. Den was toasted with Champagne and Diamond said a few words about what Den would have thought of it and probably said... ("Shoot ooop, ya blooody silly woman!" and so on).

Diamond suggested that I was only making a fuss of her because she hadn't brought Rags along (there is this outrageous suggestion that I am not the best hostess where Rags is concerned).

Our heatwave continues and we get buzzed off with Dad's No 2 blade (4mm) after breakfast. This makes Haggis's neck, back, flanks and rump look like they are covered with white felt, so dense is his coat. I get a finish which is just as smooth but silkier and grey/silver looking where my coat is nothing like so dense. We will both be all the cooler for that.

So hot is it, that Dad wakes early and heads for the allotment at 06:30 for some digging before it heats up. The soil is dry as dust on top and only mildly darker and crumby at spade-depth. Dad is not alone - quite a few allotmenteers are up and about at that time (and we later find John had been at his since 05:45. We are told it is the driest hottest first-half-of-year for 80 years down here in the SE and that is even with the cold and wet which is now just a distant memory from ?? April.

Hot dogs

Deefski

Timey Wimey

No, don't worry - we're not getting all Doctor Who on you. Remember, though that we used to have the Denis N Memorial bay tree in the garden, but it was blocking out the light, so Diamond's John and his trusty chain-saw reduced it to the Denis N Memorial Stump (pictured), onto the top of which will be attached the Denis N Memorial Sundial (picture soon). Well, that's now arrived and Mum and Dad, not satisfied with any old sundial, went for a "proper" one.

They had no idea what this would entail, but chose a shiny brass one and filled in all the details on the form, this just for the design proofs. They had to give latitude and longitude and there is a place for some bigger-script words (we chose "For Denis") and another for a suitable quote or, for example, biblical text. Mum chose "The garden is a lovesome thing, God wot" from a favourite poem.

The dial has now arrived and the setting up is quite a pallaver, especially as John's chain saw cut was not... um.... how shall we put it..... exactly horizontal. The disc of the dial has to sit exactly horizontal (spirit level job) so that meant a bed of putty with suitable sized stones embedded. It then has to be exactly aligned to the meridian.

Amazingly (we learned), the sun's movements relative to earth are not exactly regular - the 24 hours is only an average - in fact the apparent position of the sun at each hour varies by +15 to -15 minutes depending on month (14.20 minutes "slow" by a sundial on 12th Feb, 16.23 mins fast on 3rd November, almost correct on 16th April, 14th June, 2nd Sept and 25th Dec) I kid you not - it's called the "Equation of Time". Neither the sundial nor the clock are "wrong", they are just measuring different versions of time.

The need for latitude (we are 51 degrees, 20 minutes North) is so that the "finger" of the dial (called a "gnomon) can point exactly at the North Star.

And then, of course, there's the fact that the dial is calculated and configured to GMT, so for all the Summer it's an hour wrong.

And then Mum decided she didn't like it just perched on the stump, but would prefer it to have some kind of "table" on which to sit, so a suitable flagstone was bought, the thing dismantled, and the re-assembled with the flag twixt stump and brass.

That's all human stuff - I'm only interested in Breakfast Time, Dinner Time, walk time and bed time

Deefer