After the eye-candy videography of the Yorkshire Dales and the Pennines, we bring narrowboat Silver Fox back into civilisation, making a brief visit to Leeds. We leave via Lock One and drop onto the Aire and Calder Navigation, passing Thwaite Mills, Lemonroyd Marina and the flooded St Aidan's opencast mine, now a nature reserve. Colin finds out why the canal and river were re-routed thirty years ago, and we end our journey in our old hometown of Castleford. Unfortunatley, not much fun for Dillon as he has some dental work planned!
We begin our day on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at the Bingley Five Rise Locks, looking at the history of this amazing canal attraction, described by IWA co-founder, Robert Aikman, as one of the Seven Wonders of the Waterways. After getting our engine bay flooded, Colin takes a look at it's smaller sibling, the Three Rise Locks and how the canal was moved to make way for improvements to Bingley's roads. From Bingley we make our way to the historical, architectural wonder that is Saltaire, built by Titus Salt in the 1800's, the famous Salts Mill is an amazing sight to see from the canal.
We begin on the edge of the Lancashire and Yorkshire border at Greenberfield on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal, taking the locks down towards the picture postcard village of East Marton. Here, the beautiful Yorkshire Countryside opens out with spectacular views across the hills and dales. We soak in the beauty from narrowboat Silver Fox and from the air by drone. From East Marton we make our way to Bank Newton and onto Gargrave where we rest after a day of record breaking temperatures.
We leave Reedley Marina and join up with Gary and Dawn from Narrowboat Bagpuss to climb the Barrowford Locks and reach the highest point of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. We bury ourselved under the Pennines through Fouldridge Tunnel and find out about Buttercup the cow who swam a mile through the tunnel. We end our journey in Yorkshire and the views are spectacular!
One of the toughest episodes we've filmed so far! We leave our mooring and take narrowboat Silver Fox through Chorley, visiting Botany Bay before climbing the scenic Johnson's Hill Locks flight of seven locks. At our next mooring, Colin has one of the worst meltdowns in his life, resulting in him self-harming. We decided to talk about it for the first time in the hope that it helps anyone who suffers from mental health issues and/or may have self-harmed before.
