Day 3: Wednesday 1 July.

Keighley to Skipton ~20km. (Hotel to hotel)

We left our hotel, Travelodge, ~9:10am and took the B6265 towards the canal. However just after crossing the river Aire we found a path on the LHS of the road that led back up to the canal, at the point we left it yesterday. The path varied from good to almost impassable and from tidy to extremely littered. As it is a useful path we hope to provide more details of its entry and exit points later.

The weather was hot and sunny and there was lots of loud birdsong. It is possible some of the volume was needed because of the intrusive noise from the A629, which at times was quite unpleasant.

The towpath was more uneven today and we saw fewer bicycles, possibly as a result of this. The surroundings of the canal today were much more rural with farms with sheep and cows coming down to the canal to drink.

We stopped for lunch at the pub in Kildwick.

Near Low Bradley we passed a monument to a Polish WWII bomber crew, killed on a training mission when one of the wing spars fractured.

We have seen quite a few swans on the canal, usually with one or two cygnets. Today we saw a pair who had managed to raise 9 young.

It was hot and tiring and we stopped in Skipton for ice creams. At the Skipton canal basin we took the photo shown below. A digitally magnified central portion of the picture is also shown. There you can see the bronze statue of Freddie Truman, the Yorkshire fast bowler.

We walked West out of Skipton but had great difficulty locating the footpath from the canal up to our hotel, Travelodge. We were dehydrated and exhausted when we reached. Don't know if it was the heat or the advancing years. IT WAS THE HOTTEST DAY EVER AT WIMBLEDON.