Leeds-Liverpool Canal at Bingley

Took grandchild number one for a bike ride along the Leeds-Liverpool canal yesterday.  The picture shows the canal just above the Five Rise Locks at Bingley.  The canal once had a link to the centre of Bradford. There was talk of reinstating it at one point, but I don't think there was the money to do it and it never happened.

Five Rise Locks - Bingley

It looks like the cold weather we have been experiencing over the last five or six weeks has finally gone, it has been pleasantly warm here for the last two or three days.  I took the opportunity yesterday to visit the Five Rise Locks on the Leeds/Liverpool canal at Bingley, luckily, there was a boat descending the locks and I was able to get a picture of it leaving the bottom lock.  When I last visited, over the winter period, the lock gates were being replaced and it was possible to walk along the bottom of the drained locks (along with several hundred other people who also turned up for the open day) which was quite an experience.  I believe the gates last around thirty years, so I probably won't be around when they next need replacing.

Five Rise Locks - Gate Replacement

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!

Leeds Liverpool Canal - Dobson Locks

The Leeds-Liverpool canal is the longest canal in the North of England at one hundred and twenty seven miles and has a total of ninety one locks. The first section of the canal was opened in seventeen seventy three but it was another forty six years before the canal was fully completed and the cost was five times the original estimate. This two-rise staircase lock is at Apperley Bridge and was completed in seventeen seventy seven and is now a Grade II listed structure. The boat in the picture is much wider than the usual boats, I think it is referred to as 'wide beam' which limits the canals it can be used on, many of the canals in the UK are much narrower and can only take 'narrowboats'.

Five Rise Locks - Bingley

It's quilte interesting to watch the boats working their way up the Five Rise Locks at Bingley. On this occasion there weren't any boats so I had to look around for something else to photograph. I think this picture looks a bit like one of those Victorian post cards, the white car parked in the lane spoils it a bit, but the scene is probably the same as it was a hundred and fifty years ago.