Rain, thunder, hail, more rain and a bit of sunshine

 Graham's new friend

We finally left Skipton this morning, and despite what the weather forecast said about a sunny  morning, it was raining. It kept on raining as we negotiated several wet swing bridges, with just the occasional sunny interlude. We met this duck in one of the Gargrave flight of locks - she was desperate to jump on the boat and join me, but settled for taking a couple of slices worth of bread from my hand.

 The Paparazzi are everywhere!

We sailed on through the rain, watching the sky getting blacker and blacker ahead. We progressively added more layers of waterproofs until we looked like this!

 Angela fighting an unusual lock mechanism

We met a really helpful lock keeper in the Gargrave flight who walked with Angela beteen the first 3 locks and demonstrated how to use these strange top paddles - the caption above says 'fighting' and that is no exageration.

 The start of the Bank Newton flight

As we got stuck into the Bank Newton flight of 6 locks, the sky got really black. We had moored up for a bacon and egg sandwich just before the bottom lock, using eggs bought from a farm a couple of miles back. They were delicious but just as we were finishing them, a wide beam boat appeared. We shoved the rest of our sandwiches down and let loose the ropes and nipped into the first lock ahead of them. The picture above shows them snarling at us from the lock below!

 And looking the other way - the lull before the storm

As we entered the lock show at the top of the photo above, the sky was black. I was scrambling up a greasy ladder when there was an almighty crash of thunder which nearly had me in the water!

 Angela mimicking Gene Kelly

The heavens then opened and it teemed with rain and then hail, with lightning flashes and great claps of thunder continously. We were were waiting for the lock to fill when we decided to take refuge in the boat since we were getting absolutely soaked.

 Can it get any worse?

We were watching the hail building up on the back deck and listening to the thunder when the crew of two boats coming the other way appeared. They appeared to be made of sterner stuff than us or were just plain barking, but we had to leap back into action and move out.Thankfully the storm abated shortly after and we saw a bit of sunshine.

 Today's cute creature is a curlew - we think

We are now very close to the highest point on the journey and the scenery is wonderful. We spotted this bird some way off and having looked at the bird book, believe it to be a curlew?

Tonight's view from the bedroom

We moored up in a lovely spot, surrounded by fields of sheep and with distant views of mountains - it doesn't get much better than this. What time will the sheep on both sides of the boat wake up in the morning and baa?