This was a great day as we descended the Bingley Five Rise staircase as it is known.
Firstly though we had to take on water at the point at the top of the staircase, this took us just over twenty minutes and all the time we were there the lock keepers were dodging in and out of their hut looking at us, they just seemed to want to get on with it, probably because there are very few boats moving around here at the moment and they wanted something to do.
This twenty minutes gave the crowds time to gather, one dad even asked me if his boy used the toilet now would he miss us entering the first lock.
It is a lonely place in these huge locks, you just cant help thinking about how many tons upon tons of water are being held back by those creaking gates, yes they do creak, you can hear them over the engine.
The Bingley drops you sixty feet over the length of the five locks, from the top it looks impossibly steep and makes you think of a ski run.
Very shortly afterwards you pass through another three in a staircase that drop you a further thirty feet.
While passing through we were lucky enough to meet two boats coming the other way, I say "lucky" because this is one of those things associated with locks that seems very difficult to describe but is in fact very easy to do.
Here we go then,
On your marks, get set, go...... the gates have opened, two boats in front of me. 
The left hand boat moves up alongside.
Meanwhile the right hand boat moves to the left and I move down.
The boat in the upper lock now moves over to where I was and the other boat moves up, simples!!!
Off we go, you can see here how far over we could reach with the polish. The lock keeper asked us why our boat was two different colours as it really showed up from above.
There it is in all its glory, a great experience, five locks, sixty feet down (slap hands together), DONE.
A fine use of a beautiful old mill's chimney, now, what is it that they sell again?
Nearly at Leeds now where we will be meeting our son who is at the uni here. It seems that he might be coming aboard for a day or two.
Until tomorrow...............................
2 comments:
I think the Bingley 5 are a fantastic piece of canal engineering and one of the must see/do things on the system.
I remember sitting outside the cafe with an ice cream waiting for water and the lockie came up to find out if we intended to go down the flight as at the time there were 3 of us in convoy all sitting on the water point with ices but that`s the life eh chillout the locks can wait.
Well done both of you. Why not contact us on skype or by e-mail....Love to chat.
Rick
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