Lyra's Travels

Saturday 8th September
We decided last night to get a good start this morning and get to Leeds early.
Duly, we were on our way by just gone 8.00 o'clock. The weather was glorious, wall to wall sunshine and hardly a breath of wind. We cracked along a seemingly deserted navigation to Fishpond Lock. We always seem to forget that this one is there, and are surprised when we check the map for the day ahead, "oh yes, Fishpond Lock, forgot about that". It seems to be in the middle of nowhere, not unusual for a lock I suppose but it just seems remote for some reason.
Knostrop Fall Lock and then Leeds Lock and we were there, home.
It sounds strange to call somewhere home after 3 years of wandering, but having spent last winter here, and hope to make Leeds our final destination if we ever have to give up travelling, it does feel like home.
Steering into Clarence Dock we found that someone else had purloined our mooring and all the visitor  moorings were full, so we took an empty pontoon (reserved for another boat, but they weren't here) and went to see what was going on. "Bendigo", the boat on our mooring, was in fact from the live-aboard moorings between the flats and had moved there ready to go out with friends later in the week. I said they could stay as we had somewhere down the line to tie up, and they would be gone tomorrow so we would move then.
As soon we had completed the ritual of hookup and tune the satellite I dived into town for a haircut. What a relief, it was getting out of hand.
This afternoon Damon, Liz and Daniel will be coming along with our mountain of post and hopefully my electric razor, which I had left behind on our last visit. How I missed that thing, I hate wet shaving! We'll all go out for dinner tonight, nothing fancy, just Pizza Express.