On our way back home

Sunday 7th September 2014
A much better day weather wise. Cath had seen some shoes and a rather nice waterproof coat in a magazine flyer from Cotton Traders. There just happens to be one here in Skipton. It's Sunday so they don't open until 11 am and we decided to wait until then rather than heading off back home early.
This gave me a chance to try and remove the dead start battery from the engine compartment so that I could measure it up for a replacement. Any boaters reading this will know that it isn't easy lugging a battery out of the deep dark space that they always seem to be in. I finally managed it though.
Now that I've got it out I'm not yet convinced that it is dead, so must do some more checks before I go throwing money at a new one.
We walked up town later in the morning and arrived just in time to see them open up. They didn't have the shoes that Cath liked in stock, but the coat was there and is really good. It will get a good testing when we descend the Bingley 5 and 3 rise locks. They leak badly and there are fountains issuing from the top gates in most of the chambers.
We set off late morning on our return trip. First we went up to the Springs Branch in the middle of town in order to turn around, then stopped at the service area to dump a can and fill with water. I have to say that the water supply here is wonderful, I don't think we have ever filled Lyra's water tank so fast.
Soon we were on our way, with the prospect of many swing bridges to do. The first of which was Snaygill.

There is a rather nice looking Bistro canalside here, but we didn't get a chance to use it. We were told that the mooring here is very shallow so maybe it was a good thing we didn't try.
We did catch up with one of the day boats out of Skipton, it was full of folk dressed a pirates (very original-not). We opened the bridge for them and they thanked us and carried on, but we very soon caught them up again because they were really going slowly. At the next bridge they did finally manage to get it open and we carried on to get the next one ready. I opened it, but they were so far behind that I couldn't hold it any longer because traffic was building up. So we didn't really get a pairing going.

Just past Silsden we found a lovely spot to moor for the night, great views. So here we are, glass of wine for Cath and a whisky for me, relaxing, lovely.
This is the view from the boat.