Easter Holiday

With just six weekends left, that is just twelve working days, we have to get Naughty-Cal ready to cruise for our first holiday of the year at Easter. This will be a hard task and will involve some long weekends of hard graft.

As well as preparing the boat we also have a lot of planning and preparation involved with this trip. We need to check the tide times and tide heights for the week, contact Goole Docks to arrange entry onto the Aire and Calder Navigation through the massive commercial Ocean Lock and we are also planning a meet up of Canal World Forum members for a BBQ at Woodlesford during the week. Taking holidays on tidal waterways, and the coast, requires a lot more planning than your typical canal holiday as you are very much restricted by the tide times and restraints.

The holiday will start on Good Friday with an easy evenings cruise along the Fossdyke to Torksey. We have done this trip many times and it is always a peaceful way to start a holiday. It is also a good chance to check that all is well with Cal’s operating systems before heading out onto more serious waterways. We usually end up in the White Swan for a drink or two before last orders and it always seems to be a fitting start to a holiday.

Saturday will be a long day afloat. The aim is to head out onto the tidal Trent as soon as Torksey Lock can let us out and have a potter down to Gainsborough where the river becomes the jurisdiction of ABP. From here it will be an hour and a half sprint to Trent End at 25 knots to beat the tide and arrive whilst there is still enough water to enter the anchorage and drop the hook. We will then have a three or four hour wait for the tide to start running in again and give us enough water to travel up the Ouse and enter Ocean Lock on the free lockings. We will spend our time at anchor having a spot of lunch and enjoying the peaceful surroundings before raising the anchor and heading for Goole. Once on the Aire and Calder we will meet up with our friends on Chrisnico and head off up river to Pollington, a place we have visited before and really liked. Not least because there is a good Indian restaurant in the village within easy walking distance of the moorings.

Sunday will again be a long day if we are to get to Woodlesford for our planned BBQ party. We will have some twenty miles and five huge mechanised locks to negotiate before we reach our destination. If we have a reasonably early start we should make it by mid afternoon, just in time for the party to start and get into gear. It will be nice to put some names to faces as I have spoken, via the internet, with some of the people who will be there for a few years now but we have never met face to face.

Monday will thankfully be a much quieter and easier days cruising with just seven miles cruising and three locks before we reach our destination of Clarence Dock, Leeds. We will hopefully be moored up and ready to explore the city by lunchtime. We are undecided as to whether or not we will have one or two nights in Leeds and will take this as we find it. If we fancy a second night we can do that and have a couple of slightly longer cruising days on the way home. There seems to be so much to see and do in Leeds that we will be spoilt for choice.

On the return journey we will be taking a slightly different route to the out bound leg. We fully intend to stop for the evening again at Pollington and it is just past here that we will turn onto the Sheffield and South Yorkshire Navigation, heading for Keadby as our point of exit onto the Trent. We have done this section of canal before so know where we can make up some time if need be or where we can slow down and stock up if time allows, but the aim is to be at Keadby for Friday evening ready for a Saturday morning tide back to Torksey. We will need to stop off in Thorne to fill up with diesel but other than that we have no plans for this section of the navigation as much will depend on how long we stay in Leeds.

This trip to Leeds will be a great warm up cruise for the year ahead with lots of varied waterways to explore. It will give us chance to have a high speed blast down the Trent, drop the hook and spend some time at anchor and also to explore some sections of the Aire and Calder that we have not previously had the chance to visit. This trip should highlight any problems we are likely to have throughout the year and give us the chance to check that everything is working as it should before this year’s big adventures on the sea. If any potential problems are highlighted we will have a couple of weekends before the next break to put them right.