Whilst taking Duggie for his morning walk I crossed the old town road bridge across the River Calder and discovered that it had been built in 1342 and the little chapel at one end was built between 1342 and 1356, thankfully, but only in recent years has this bridge been by-passed. A little further on and I came to The Fall Ings Lock, where the Calder and Hebble navigation came to an end and the Aire and Calder Navigation took over. By the lock an information board said that only in 2005 had all the of the coal loading chutes been removed from this area, a few permanently moored boats in bays indicated where the boats would have come to have been loaded. A pity that they hadn’t left some indication of what it would have looked liked.
We didn’t tarry in Wakefield but moved on through the Fall Ings Lock and for a mile we were back on to the mighty Calder, before once again entering a long canal section. We stopped at midday in bright sunshine at Stanley Ferry, which doesn’t seem to have a ferry but does have two aqueducts crossing the River Calder. The earlier one, a splendid cast iron arch supporting the duct and looks like a mini version of the Sydney Harbour Bridge was superseded by a boring concrete one in 1981. All boats now use the new duct as the old one was thought to be in danger of damage from the large vessels that were using the canal at that time.
Ann and Brian, veterans on SKYY, joined us in the afternoon and as they intended to be with us for a week, a small BW car park at the end of the large Stanley Ferry pub car park and was considered to be a safe place to leave the car. We settled down for the evening with an early start planned for Monday.
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