Back out into the country

Above Office Lock, on the offside of the canal, there’s a new development being started, comprising residential and office premises. But rising over the building site are three Grade II listed structures, seemingly misplaced from the Mediterranean.  
The site used to be a factory producing steel items for the textile industry, and it’s founder, TR Harding, was a great fan of Italian architecture. The two in the centre of the picture were built at the same time as the factory and are the most ornate. The third, to the left is plainer and was constructed when the factory was extended in 1899. The two original towers were chimneys for smoke and dust-extraction.

Office Lock is named for the building which stands beside it…  
Seyella tucked between the Candle House on the left and the Hilton Double Tree on the right.

Granary Wharf was a complex of warehouses and a boatbuilder where the Leeds and Liverpool Canal meets the River Aire

Wet and dry docks used by the boatbuilder.

It was gloomy again as we backed out from the old wharf and headed for River Lock.

River Lock, Leeds and Liverpool Canal Lock 1
The warehouse alongside is the oldest still standing in the basin complex, contemporary with the canal.

I paused before opening the paddles to drain the lock, the water taxi had arrived to pick up a group of customers from the lock landing.
The rush of water as the lock emptied would have made life difficult for him…

Down the lock and it’s about three-quarters of a mile to the next, past old warehouses and under the city’s bridges.

Victoria Bridge.




The water taxi on his way back from Leeds Dock next to the Royal Armouries Museum

Crown Point Bridge.


Below Crown Point the river heads off over a large weir, while the navigation channel swings to the right, past the entrance to Leeds Dock and under the impressive glass atrium of the museum.

Leeds Lock, the last of the short ones and the first of the mechanised ones.

We topped up the water tank at the service wharf around the corner, then set off down river, leaving the city behind.


There’s been a lot of investment in flood defenses mostly around the Knostrop Falls area. A new channel takes the navigation past, rather than through, the now-redundant Knostrop Falls Flood Lock.

The old flood lock is to the left of the island which is now studded with new trees.

Knostrop Falls Lock is the first of the large locks coming downstream out of Leeds, and a single narrowboat looks lost in a chamber that will take nine or ten.


New weirs and a footbridge alongside the lock

Mags coming in to pick me up.


Two and a half miles of easy cruising take us past the Thwaite Mills Industrial Museum with it’s busy moorings…


…and under the A1/M1 link road


Into Fishpond Lock

I couldn’t get the gates to open for a start, but going to the bottom end, dropping a foot of water out and then refilling it seemed to sort out the interlocks.

Coming in to moor above Woodlesford Lock, about a mile further on.

I reckon we’ll be here for the weekend unless anything changes. We’ve time to kill; we’re not due at Keadby Lock for penning out onto the tidal Trent until January 12th. Before then the tide times don’t fit into the daylight window. We could go upstream against the tide, but if there’s a lot of fresh coming down it’s a hard slog to Torksey. Better to wait and run with the flood.

Locks 4, miles 5½