The Five Rise Locks on the Leeds-Liverpool canal at Bingley are currently closed to waterway traffic but have been open to the public this weekend. The locks were built in 1774 and are the steepest lock staircase in Britain. Four of the six pairs of lock gates are being replaced as well as repairs to the lock chamber brickwork. I went along yesterday but hadn't expected a queue of several hundred people patiently waiting to descend into the drained locks, an hour or more queueing didn't appeal to me so I came away. I returned this morning at opening time and joined a queue of around a dozen people (more my kind of queue), but when I left around half an hour later the queue had grown to several hundred people again, I had no idea our industrial heritage could be such a crowd puller!
Hello. I went along this afternoon after church but it was incredibly busy then too! I didn't fancy wasting my day queueing so I had a walk along the field path to Bingley and across the bridge which was equally nice. I had a feeling you might have gone Martin to take a picture for me of what I missed and I was right! So thankyou! Mark D
ReplyDeleteI too walked along this stretch of the towpath and got chatting to a man. He said the queue was pretty long and he had decided to give it a miss, me too. I was consoled by our chat about his beautiful working border collie.
ReplyDeleteAn inspired idea to allow people to walk the locks, who knew so many people would be interested enough to turn up and get their boots muddy!
ReplyDeleteOne of these days I'll bump into you somewhere! I was there on Sunday morning too but there might have been 50 people in the queue by the time I arrived - more like 500 when I left!
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