FRIDAY. Castleford had not benefited from our undivided attention; we rectified this omission this morning. Walking from the visitor moorings, you pass by the maintenance yards, presently both silent, of BW and Norec (Cawood Hargreaves in coal moving days). On the main road, Lock Lane, there is a scrap yard entrance with a good artwork/sculpture, we liked it and it made us smile. On the way to the town centre, the river Aire bridge is an elegant three arch stone structure, designed by Bernard Hartley, surveyor of bridges for the West Riding and built in 1808 by his son Jesse, who went on to construct Albert Dock in Liverpool (as the plaque informed us). We stopped on it and looked upstream to the weir and the new pedestrian bridge. A local man told us that it should have opened in December 2007. It has not yet opened but did have a lot of men working on it today. They have built new fish and eel ladders at the north end of the weir. The town centre had a good selection of shops, a good covered market and two large amusement arcades. Above the new shop fronts, there were the remains of a few interesting buildings with nice carved eaves and patterned brickwork. After our inspection of Castleford, we decided to visit Wakefield by bus after lunch. We spent a long time in the Cathedral, which had many interesting features and then went building spotting. We spent some time wandering around the small museum housed in the Mechanics Institute building and found the excellent gothic revival Town Hall with a large clock tower, the 1806 Court house and the very impressive county hall, opened on 22nd February 1898. It is reassuring to discover that bureaucracy is not a new problem as the County hall had two wings added between 1912 and 1915. We managed to avoid the rain showers and had been back onboard before the really heavy stuff came down.
The 2008 journey thus far: 198 Locks & 315 Miles & 19 Swing\Lift Bridges
Journeys using bus pass: 11
