Ur, Um

Thursday, 08 July 2010 23:26

We are now on the River Ure - sorry about the title!

The River Ouse unobtrusively became the River Ure at "Swale Nab", can you spot it? This is where the Ouse Gill Beck joins the river!

We were accompanied along the river by swallows and sand martins, swooping and diving around us. Looking at the banks I spotted the sand martin's homes.

You can just see them

Rounding the corner we saw lots of canoes across the river. Eventually the "adult in charge" marshalled them together to make some sort of order of the chaos and we passed by, regaled by tales of duckings from the children.

Canoe chaos

The bridge above is the privately owned Aldwark Toll Bridge. It is 238 years old, built to replace a ferry and is constructed of bricks, iron and wood.

It was made to take horse and carriage but now cars rattle over the wooden road bed. The gas guzzlers have to pay a toll to save the round trip of 25 miles between the villages of Little Ousburn and Aldwark.

Looking up at wooden road bed

The River Swale (unnavigable) leaves the Ure at a much more obvious confluence, apparently also named Swale Nab. We were now in a 4mph speed limit and, boy, did it seem slow! We had forgotten what canal cruising was like!

River Swale off to the right

Milby Lock was fun - the bollards were being painted, so I hung around in preference to having white ropes and the wrath of the BW painter!

Milby Lock

The lock was one of the most frightening ones I have been in. We have to be diagonal as the locks are short, the top gates leak like fury causing a waterfall onto the bows and the paddles are fierce!

Milby Lock was the worst so far .... warning: when going open the paddles VERY slowly otherwise you will be jammed against the bottom gates and out of control - I was! Above me loomed the lock gate bridge and I was concerned that I would get trapped. Fortunately to my relief and the saving of John's head (I nearly asked for it on a platter!) things settled down eventually! (In my defence, it wasn't helped by the nearside paddle being very gentle - aka out of order - so lifting it first didn't cause any turbulence - Ed.)

Leaving the lock behind

Boroughbridge moorings are not far from the lock. We were the second narrowboat to moor - by the time we had returned from a walk into Boroughbridge the moorings were full. It was a good job we had started off early after all.

Moored at Boroughbridge with sani-station, water and diesel across the river

River Ouse, York to Boroughbridge, River Ure

5 hours 2 minutes, 19.52 miles, 2 locks