I had some difficulty getting back on board, had to borrow another boat’s gang plank.

I’d slackened off the mooring ropes last night, and fortunately another boater (thanks Narrowboat Olympus) had slackened them even further. Drove the boat to a safer spot, and the water seems to be receding. But I’ll be watching out tonight in case the water level suddenly drops, or more rain brings even worse flooding.

York’s had it much worse than this of course.

The lock only fits two boats. So a couple of narrowboats went out before us, and a couple of cruisers were behind (and soon caught up).

My companion boat had been on this river before so I followed it under the bridges. There was a surprising amount of floating junk to avoid, mostly large logs and branches but also a dead cow.

Left the tidal section at Naburn Lock, which was effortless to approach and enter, and headed on the final few miles to the city of York.

I arrived in York a few hours after departing Selby. The waterfront is lively, with small boats to hire by the hour, big trip and party boats, and rowers. The river is overlooked by cafes, and there’s a floating cafe that puts out tables on the towpath outside the museum gardens. Loved it here so much that we stayed a couple of weeks.

Here’s the front deck of Audrey Too. I appreciate the handles cut into the steel to help you get on and off the boat, it’s a great feature.

Trilby is very similar in design, with similar but straighter handles, the same t-stud at the front and similar decorative touches on the roof and gas bottle hatch.

The Tinsley Flight of 11 small locks has to be traversed to reach Sheffield. We booked passage 24 hours in advance: Derek from British Waterways met me at Holmes Lock and worked all the locks to Sheffield, while I did the driving.

These locks require a windlass to operate. Which makes a change after all the huge automated locks we’ve got used to lately.

I really must find out the proper name for these poles. You can put your rope through them to hold your boat steady against the side of the lock as the water level rises or falls.

At 60 foot, Audrey Too is apparently the maximum length for a boat in these locks. The BW guy suggested I keep the boat’s bow nosed into the top gates, because that was safer than letting the stern hit the gates behind.

At one lock, whilst the water level rose particularly slowly, I daydreamed for a moment, only to realise the tiller had got jammed under the platform of the lock behind me. A wooden platform sticking out so far into the lock isn’t something I’d seen on a lock before. Fortunately the BW guy was quick to bring the water level back down a few inches to release the boat.

Once through the locks it’s a short trip to the moorings at Victoria Quays, past steel workshops and these sturdy looking bridges.

It didn’t start raining until we were at the penultimate lock, and the shower was heavy but quick. On arrival in Sheffield’s Victoria Quays there was a rainbow.

The moorings in the canal basin are not owned by British Waterways but by Calder Valley Marine, a private company. They like you to call ahead to book a mooring spot if you’re planning to visit. The facilities are good here: we’ve got a great temporary mooring, with electrical hookup, water, Elsan and bins all nearby.

This view of our boat was taken from the garden of the toll house. which was open today for a small art exhibition.

Moored near Sprotbrough Lock is a trip boat, which picks up parties opposite the visitor mooring, but thankfully only plays loud 80s music for a short while before heading upstream.

It’s rained most of the day, so we didn’t go out for the long walk we’d hoped for. The rain, falling straight and fast, made bubbles on the surface of the River Don.

Only complaint: once again this mooring turns out to be for 48 hours only. Down South there are plenty of two week moorings, but so far in West and South Yorkshire we’re finding those few and far between.

No wifi signal. Not even any mobile phone reception. This particular middle of nowhere had pleasant countryside, but how would I get any work done tomorrow without Internet? Time to move on.

On the other side of the lock was another narrowboat and I guessed correctly that they’d be on the move first thing in the morning. I tagged along with them because there were lift bridges ahead and I can’t work those on my own; not without holding up the traffic unnecessarily. At this time of the morning drivers are on their way to work, and making them wait longer than necessary while boats use the bridge would be justfiable cause for road rage.

Grief, it was windy! It’s difficult to drive a narrowboat when the wind’s strong. If you’re moored, it takes several attempts to push the front of the boat out: before you can run to the aft of the boat, the front’s back against the bank again. Sometimes it’s possible to reverse fast into the centre of the canal, then straighten out and go forward. Sometimes you have to find someone to help give the boat a shove while you accelerate fast.

If the wind’s against you, you can try driving at an angle into the wind instead of trying to plough straight forward. The wind will sometimes hit the bow, sometimes the stern of the boat, and she pivots one way or the other. You make constant adjustments, moving the tiller one way and the other to stay on path, speeding up to get more control over the steering.

While trying to moor, the wind shoved the other narrowboat into the side with a great big bump. They gave up half way to Doncaster.

I kept going, and was joined by a chap on one of those big blue British Waterways boats. That was handy because he’d got a colleague to open the swing bridge and lock ahead. If I’d had to do that by myself it would have been a slower journey. The wind was troubling his boat too, so I kept well out of the way as it overtook.

Doncaster’s got good, securely locked moorings, with water, electricity and rubbish collection facilities. You can only stay 72 hours. Many of the better moorings we’ve seen in Yorkshire allow only 2 or 3 days. Had a bumpy night, with little waves forming on the water and splashing constantly on the hull.

Makes a change from being woken up by ducks tapping their beaks on the hull to eat the weed that grows along the boat’s side.

This clement weather, a relief after the cruel winter, is a call to paint, varnish, tackle rust, and generally fix and spring clean. This Easter weekend I sandpapered and varnished the wooden seats at the fore and aft of the boat. The aft seat had been loose for many months, and I finally got round to glueing and screwing the wooden seat back onto the metal railing.

The decks were looking scuffed and grey, so I washed, rust-proofed then put a couple of layers of paint down. Still have a tin of Craftmaster Oxford Blue left, so they’ll get another coat later, followed by some varnish to add some shine.

The local chandlery at Apperley Bridge had run out of bilge paint, so that task will have to wait a few weeks. Cleaning and painting the bilge is an unpleasant task, not so much because of the oil and water that needs removing, but because you have to be a contortionist to squeeze into the space beside the engine and wield a paintbrush, and it’s a sure way to get backache.

The roof needs attention, the white paint’s looking drab and there are rust spots appearing. That’s a job Alisha and I will do together soon, using non-slip paint.

This is our living room, which has a sofa bed, cupboards for books, and the door leading onto the front deck. The curtain, made by Alisha, was made from fabric I’d bought in India a decade ago.

The living room leads into the galley (or kitchen as landlubbers might call it) which is big enough for our needs. We can’t use an electric kettle because they draw too much power, so we have an old-fashioned whistling kettle on the gas stove: shame someone lost the whistle on the day we bought it.

Beyond the galley’s door is the main bedroom, with a double bed and shelves for books. All the lighting is 12 volt, powered by batteries at the back of the boat. Alisha’s applied her love of butterflies to the decor, they’re everywhere.

The bathroom’s beyond the bedroom door, with a shower cubicle and cassette toilet.

When we bought the boat we decided not to have a fixed dining table and seats, in order to have additional beds for guests to stay. So at the back of the boat is a room with bunkbeds and extra cupboards and wardrobe. There’s also an electrical panel, inverter to produce 240 volt electricity, and plenty of storage cupboards.

Finally, at the rear of the boat, underneath the deck, is the engine room which also houses the propshaft, diesel heater and calorifier (for hot water).

Opposite is the Royal Armouries museum, where the photo above was taken from.

If the river Aire is likely to be in flood, these flood gates at the entrance to the marina are closed.

We’ll definitely get a winter mooring next year, it’s so much more convenient to be on mains electricity and have water and facilities nearby during the colder months.

Only a few months beforehand we had had the heater repaired by a boatyard on the River Lee, where they’d replaced the glow plug and given the heater a service. Soon afterwards the heater was misbehaving again. Turns out that they’d failed to spot several other burnt out components.

Thanks to Mellor Auto Electrical, a company in Ossett, West Yorkshire, the heater’s been working reliably for several months and the rest of winter was comfortable and warm onboard our boat.

I had to dismantle the heater before I could take it to be fixed, which took me a couple of hours to figure out, and that was no fun at all in sub-zero temperatures, crouched up between the engine and the hull. Putting it back together again took only half an hour, these tasks are so much easier when you know what you’re doing.

The photo below shows the engine room, with the Mikuni heater on the top left.

We’d paid in advance for the winter mooring, £200 a month, so I hope that British Waterways will give us a refund for the period we were unable to use our mooring, or allow us to extend our stay.

This time of year you have to book in advance for two chaps in a van from British Waterways to come out and help you through the locks. We were booked to travel yesterday and had our narrowboat in the first lock waiting for them, but found out when we phoned the office that no-one was coming due to staff shortages.

Today thankfully they turned up and did a great job of locking us through to Leeds. We travelled from Rodley to Leeds, a five mile trip. With the BW guys helping, it only takes a few hours to go through three staircases and several single locks. There was still a sheet of thin ice in one area, so we must have been the first boat to come through since the freeze.

So we:

1. Emptied the cold water tank at the front of the boat (takes ages because if you let the water pump run for too long it overheats and cuts out)
2. Turned the tap to cut off the water supply from the water tank.
3. Emptied the hot water from the calorifier at the back of the boat.
4. Used the bilge pump to remove water from the engine compartment, then pumped the rest out manually.
5. Closed the taps on the gas bottles in the front of the boat.
6. Ran the pump to ensure the shower area was emptied of all water.
7. Wrapped the shower head and water pumps in old clothes.
8. Checked the electrical landline was plugged in, and the inverter in the “charge only” position, to ensure the batteries would keep topped up.
9. Checked the antifreeze level of the water in the engine’s and diesel heater’s header tanks.

Good news is that on our return there were no problems, no cracked pipes or leaks, and the engine started first time. There was ice in the kettle, it had obviously got chilly in our absence! We warmed up the boat that evening and waited till the next day to fill up the water tank.

Then, after several weeks of working unreliably the diesel heater broke down completely. In temperatures as low as minus 14 centigrade, we wouldn’t be able to stay on the boat without it. We found a company near Wakefield that repairs Mikuni heaters and I spent three hours crouched in the freezing cold engine compartment disconnecting it.

I decided to attempt to turn the boat around and head for Rodley Boat Centre where we could get water, diesel and electricity to power a fan heater and at least survive a few freezing cold nights.

Driving forward I soon reached an icy patch. Speeding towards the ice did break it but with each attempt the boat was deflected off course towards the bank. I reversed and tried again until Audrey Too reached a spot wide enough to turn around in. Unfortunately the whole winding hole was iced over so it took about 20 charges at the ice to break it up into small enough shards to drive through. To compound the difficulty, the canal was very shallow at its edges and the narrowboat got jammed a few times.

Several hours and a couple of hundred yards later I arrived at the boatyard, where I begged to moor and use their electricity. It turned out to have been a wise move because the next day the temperature plummeted, snow fell and the canal iced over again. No hope of travelling to Leeds and that cosy mooring quite yet.

Water is becoming a problem. We’ve got an almost empty tank, we’re not within reach of a tap and can’t drive to one. The local pub in Rodley has filled up a few water containers for me, and a local resident helped out with a couple of refills – I’m thankful for their assistance but that’s barely enough for a shower each day and some washing up. It’s not enough to run the washing machine so a trip to the launderette is overdue.

We filled up with diesel a week and a half ago but we’re down to one fifth of the tank. We have a diesel heater and have had to have it on constantly day and night to prevent frost damage to the water pipes, water pump, and shower, and to stay warm. Fortunately there’s a boatyard nearby so we can bring 20 litre containers of diesel to the boat by wheelbarrow, but it’s proving to be expensive. I’ve never used so much diesel in so short a time, usually a full tank lasts for several months. Before next winter we need to get a wood burning stove installed, to give us another way to heat the boat.

I’ve topped up the engine’s header tank with water and anti-freeze, made sure the greaser’s twisted daily, wiped the windows of condensation, and wished every day that we’d made it to our winter mooring before the freeze. Oh well, the snowy landscape’s been beautiful!

Narrowboat Audrey Too yesterday, stuck in ice, covered in snow. It’s supposed to be -11 degrees tonight so the diesel heater will stay on all night. Already, some windows are freezing up on the inside.