Yorkshire canal adventure holidays
Below we show some examples of routes which our customers enjoy. Distances and times shown are for the return trip. You can vary the distance to suit you, because there are plenty of turning points ('winding holes') marked in the guides on your boat. Information we provide about specific waterways or suggested routes is for general reference only. Please see more about route availability.
For experienced boaters
14 or 21 Day Trip
If you like
serious boating, long hours and have lots of experience,
then we have some challenges for you.
Have a look also at some
of these:
10/11 night adventure trips
-->Bingley
110 miles 118 locks 55 hours
Sail down the leafy Calder & Hebble Navigation past Brighouse,
and through wide river sections and narrow cuttings to
Wakefield, where there are good moorings not too far from the
bright lights. Then on to Stanley Ferry to see the famous
aqueducts and two very convenient and contrasting pubs.
You are now on the Aire & Calder, which is still a thriving
commercial waterway, though there are now many more pleasure
boats than barges. Electric locks and a wide channel help you
speed (relatively) round to Leeds, where you sail past the
regenerated waterfront.
Then join the Leeds & Liverpool Canal which quickly escapes
along its own way through fields and woods, with spectacular
views of old West Riding industry - particularly Sir Titus
Salt's Italianate mills and model town at Saltaire, with its
Hockney museum. There are several staircase locks along the way,
which culminate in the Five Rise Locks at Bingley, one of the
Seven Wonders of the Waterways.
14 night adventure trips
Sheffield
158 miles 114 locks 70 hours
Not an obvious holiday destination, but a fascinating canal journey through a rapidly rejuvenating area to the newly restored basin near the city centre. Enthusiasts enthuse; try it. Not so many locks, and many of them are electric, but still quite a long return journey.
Goole
105 miles 70 locks 50 hours
This takes you to Goole Docks, where you can take a guided boat tour to see the ships.
Travel down the Calder & Hebble Navigation to Wakefield, and take time to visit the Hepworth. Then on to Stanley Ferry and down the Wakefield DYke (properly 'Branch') of the Aire & Calder Navigation to join its main line at Castleford. Stop to see the curving Millennium Bridge across the river, and visit the flour mill museum. Keep on through Ferrybridge, where so much coal used to come by boats to feed the mighty power stations. Through Knottingley, and the canal becomes astonishingly remote, with enormous skies stretching over the flat, rural landscape. Eventually you arrive in Goole, and moor near the Sobriety Project, a waterways museum run by and for people being helped to overcome challenges in their lives.
Goole is a canal town, built from nothing by the Aire & Calder to make a port at the furthest inland point where ships could come up the tidal Aire, one of the three great rivers which combine to form the Humber Estuary. You can see many buildings from that period, and examples of the fixed and (astonishingly) floating cranes which lifted the Tom Puddings (square barges or 'pans') which brought coal in long snaking trains to be lifted into ships, for coastwise transport to the power stations of London. You are not allowed to take your boat into the docks, but hitch a lift on one of the museum's excellent guided boat trips. You may see ships unloading, and if you're lucky see one coming through Ocean Lock, or catch Exol Pride bringing oil from the refineries at Immingham to Rotherham.
Navigation notes
You need to be sure not to cross the invisible line into ABP's dock. Stop by the Sobriety Project or Goole Boathouse.