Astley Lake & Balance Reservoir

I went to visit a canalboat-dwelling friend who is moored at the Lemonroyd Waterside & Marina. It is not too far from Leeds, but as the Canal & River Trust say it is on the "River Aire [which] follows a twisting route through the hidden corners of Yorkshire." It really is watery country up there. The river Aire actually starts at Malham Tarn, and plunges underground about a mile or so before the famous Cove. In 1699 an act of Parliament was passed to make the Aire navigable South of Leeds, which led to the creation of the Aire & Calder Navigation, now connecting the Humber with Leeds over 34 miles and entailing 11 locks. The whole area is an interlocking matrix of Navigation, natural river, reservoirs and lakes which is a water wonderland ripe for exploration on foot, or by boat.

So, with blood up from a canalboat wood-stove roasted pork belly, helped along by an aromatic coffee from a local cafe, we took a suitably meandering walking route around these splendid water bodies. Some of the footpaths were flooded at this time of year, which made for some eerie misty feels.

Loch Katrine & Ben A'an

Among the first of the features of Scotland which visitors to the country express a wish to see are the island reaches of the " Queen of Scottish Lakes", and the bosky narrows and mountain pass at the eastern end of Loch Katrine, which are known as the Trossachs. During the Great War of 1914-8, when large numbers of convalescent soldiers from the dominions overseas streamed through Glasgow, so great was their demand to see these famous regions, that constant parties had to be organized to conduct them over the ground.

In character Loch Katrine is somewhat like the upper end of Loch Lomond, but is lonelier and wilder. There is no road along its southern shore, and that along the north is but little frequented. Some of the names of places along that shore are formidable enough. Among them, Strongalvaltrie, Edraleachdach, and Brenachoil offer something like dislocation to Sassenach jaws, and are only matched by the Gaelic spelling of the mountain which appears on the map and in poetry as Ben Venue, which is Beinnmheadhonaidh, and by the old Gaelic name of the Trossachs Hotel—Ard-cheanochrochan. The loch has an islet at each end, Eilean Dhu near Glengyle, and Eilean Molach, or Ellen's Isle, near the Trossachs. Both of these were doubtless used by the Macgregor clansmen as places of refuge for their women and children in times of extreme danger, though the loch shores were altogether so inaccessible in bygone times that they offered a very secure retreat. So steep are the mountain-sides at Glengyle, for instance, that a deer shot far up on the sky-line has been brought down to the door of the house almost entirely by its own weight; and the scores of streams that leap and foam down the wild corries are many of them indeed "white as the snowy charger's tail".

Eyre-Todd, George, 1920. Loch Lomond, Loch Katrine and the Trossachs. London and Glasgow: Blackie and Son.