Castleford

Sunday 23rd July 17
Beal
We awoke to reasonable weather this morning and decided to move on to Beal - a short run up the river Aire.
West Haddlesey Lock is really a flood lock protecting the Selby Canal from the varying river levels, however on this occasion the river level was the same as the canal so we only had to open and close the gates to proceed onto the river.

The imposing river gates at West Haddlesey

We moored at Beal lock (the same place we stayed on our way to Selby). Just after mooring up NB Northumbria arrived with Paul, the guy who looks after Sheffield Marina, on board, along with his dog Alfie with whom Scruff was delighted to be re-united.

The weather was remained fair so we decided to walk back along the river to the village of Kellington. This is a quite village and has an old stone church sited some way from the village itself, requiring a trek across a pumpkin field. 

The church was built on the site of an old and much smaller Saxon church the remains of which were uncovered during recent excavations, carried out whilst stabilisation works were being undertaken.

The church tower was also taken down and rebuilt stone by stone during the works, this had all become necessary due to mining subsidence. The church tower had always had a slight lean and this was maintained during the rebuilding.

Church of St Edmund King and Matyr, Kellington

Old and new parts of the church

We were lucky enough to bump into a chap who had a key to the church so we were treated to a tour round inside, it is hard to imagine that the whole of the internal floor area had been disturbed during the stabilisation work.

Leaving the church the rain returned so we walked back to Beal along the road, calling in the Jenny Wren pub for our Sunday meal, again this is a great pub, small and friendly and we enjoyed listening to the locals stories about the area.

We had to drag ourselves away from the pub to return to the boat and the rain began to become heavy so we made ourselves comfortable with a pot of tea.

The rain continued for most of the night so next morning I went to look for the level indicator to check if it was safe to proceed. The level indicators consist of a strip of metal painted green, amber and red, green indicates that it is ok to proceed i.e. the river level is normal, amber is proceed with caution and red too dangerous to go on. The higher the level usually means a faster flow.

At Beal I could not find the indicator so we had to make our own judgement, there was a lot of water flowing over the weir but the level did not to appear to have risen much overnight, this was quite difficult to judge as we were moored on a floating pontoon so our level with the pontoon remained the same.

It was also very windy adding to our concerns as to whether we should set off, however, we decided to go. 

There was a lot of flow mainly noticeable on the tight meanderings of the river but we got to Bank Dole lock without incident and tied up on the lock pontoon. 

There were two boats entering the lock from above so we helped them through before going in. As we were entering the lock another boat arrived, so we had assistance through.

Back on the canals we proceeded through Knottingley back onto the river at Ferrybridge, here the level indicators were in the green zone so we continued upstream to Castleford.

Approaching Ferrybridge

On our arrival at Castleford we moored behind a boat that had come up from London via the Trent, the lady on board had said that they had had something round the prop and they and a knocking noise from the engine. She was looking in the engine room and said that she thought it looked different, I had a look and noticed the gearbox flange was a couple of inches lower than the prop shaft, indicating a serious problem (somehow the had made it up the river in this condition), I mentioned that there was a boatyard just around the corner so off she went to find an engineer, he confirmed the seriousness of the break down by pointing out the one of the engine mounts had failed and the engine had dropped.

The boat needed to go into the yard so we breasted up alongside and towed them into the yard.

Tuesday 25th July

We decided to take the train to Pontefract today, a place I had wanted to explore for sometime as the castle featured several times during the Wars of the Roses, a period of history I have a particular interest in.

The journey is only a short 10 minute hop down the line and soon we had arrived and making our way up to the castle.

There is not much of the castle remaining but what there is is currently undergoing preservation work. It is difficult to imagine what an impressive structure this must have been with its bloody and violent history. The castle was destroyed towards the end of the English civil war, by Cromwell and his troops after requests from the townsfolk who had endured centuries of repeated attacks. During this time it had been a royalist stronghold, and Charles I army were held under siege here even after he had been executed, once they had been finally starved into surrender the castle was destroyed.

Earlier notable points in the history of the castle include the imprisonment and death of Richard II in 1399 and the execution of Sir Richard Grey, Thomas Vaughan  and Earls Rivers, all members of the Woodville family, who were trying to secure the accession of the would be king Edward V in 1483.

Although there is not much of the castle left it is still worth visiting as they have just opened a visitor centre and cafe, there are also lots of events in the grounds.

We had a look around the town, other than an interesting old market square not a great deal to see other than the usual shops and a small indoor market.

On our way back to the station we called in to look at the old parish church, this had been extensively damaged during the siege of the castle but enough remains to make it interesting, it has a rare double helix spiral stair case although this is now closed for safety reasons but they do have a model of it.

We were also shown an iron cannon ball (about 1 1/2" diameter) and very heavy, this had been recovered from the ruins and it was not known as to whether it was of royalist of parliamentarian origin.

We returned back to Castleford and fine weather so decided to get some painting done.

Wednesday morning brought more rain so we did a few internal jobs until the weather cleared up. We walked along the river to Faiburn Ings and back via a rather overgrown field path, enjoyable all the same.