Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
40
Aire & Calder Navigation
Distance
55km from River Lock to the River Ouse
Highlights
Royal Armouries Museum at Clarence Dock
Thwaite Mills Industrial Museum
Yorkshire Waterways Museum, Goole
Navigation Authority
Canal & River Trust
OS 1:50,000 Sheets
104 Leeds & Bradford
105 York & Selby
(106 Market Weighton)
111 Sheffield & Doncaster
112 Scunthorpe & Gainsborough
The River Aire received an improvement Act in 1699 and it was England's premier navigation
by 1704. It is England's leading canal freight route to this day, wide with few locks, able to
take barges up to 700t. From the 1860s until 1986 it used Tom Puddings, 40t compartment
boats to carry coal, usually towed in trains of 19, to be lifted and tipped into ships. In 1913
there were over a thousand in use. More recently, they were replaced by 210t units, moved in
threes by Cawoods Hargreaves, although the exhausting of local coal mines has resulted in the
winding-down of the trade. The locks were enlarged from 1884 and push tugs were introduced
in the 1960s. Fuel and aggregate transport still runs at about 10,000t per day, so other users
should have full competence at boat-handling and keep clear of larger craft.
The navigation begins in Leeds, at the foot of River Lock on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal.
The River Aire has just emerged from the Dark Arches beneath the station, a series of long
parallel tunnels where the water flows fast with the occasional small fall, the tunnels not be-
