Today has been a good day weather wise, but the forecast for the next few days is a bit grim.  So we decided to try and get some miles done today.  We left West Haddlesey Lock at about 9:30 aiming to get to Castleford by this evening.  A good trip, had to operate all three locks on the River Aire manually, but once back on the Aire and Calder navigation all the locks are manned and operated for you.  This is a brilliant system and we were lucky that we went straight through all the locks with no waiting and no hard workJ  Got to Castleford by mid afternoon and moored up on the visitor moorings.  Phoned Christine co author of the Richlow guides, who we met yesterday, and arranged to meet her and Mal tomorrow as they are bringing a guide to the next part of the trip out to us.  Lovely people!

Spoke to a guy that we shared a lock with today who told us that when he tried to book passage through Standedge Tunnel he had to wait 9 days so decided not to bother.  As we want to do this tunnel we thought we better check it out.  So Graham sorted out a schedule for getting there and then gave them a ring.  We are now booked to go through on the 25^th June at 9:30, first boat through that day.  This is the first time we have had a definite time restriction so hope we make it ok.

 We are now back on commercial waterways and saw two huge working boats today, Battlestone that we met soon after leaving Ferrybridge Lock Farndale that went past when we were moored.  Had to go out and retie the ropes when it had passed! 

One of the many big boats moored along these waterways.