Savile Town Marina, Dewsbury, South Yorkshire

We were glad to be away from our camp at Skipton, one for mixed reviews; brilliant position, lovely views, badly drained, overflowing rubbish bins and inadequate electric hook-up points. It had served us well and we had certainly loved the countryside all about. However if we were to return to fill in the gaps of our travel, we would stay elsewhere.

Although our departure was uneventful apart from the mud everywhere, it was the route ahead that most concerned me. We had to travel through the middle of densely populated areas and a crazy network of roads, through Bradford and the maze of urban area about. In the end it did not turn out quite as problematic as expected although Tomtom and I spent most of the short journey at loggerheads; she would have had us turning into minor roads to short cut the busy major ones. I was constantly overriding her directions, telling The Chauffeur to ignore her and go straight on or turn here, contrary to her insistence.

We were therefore most relieved when we pulled into the pub car park, and found the Caravan Club sign at the gateway of a small green area beside the canal basin. We paid up at the marina office and received instructions as to where everything was, before setting up and making the most of the facilities. There is a washing machine and dryer here, the tokens available up at the bar. I did feel rather silly with my laundry bag standing to be served at the bar amongst the smart lunchtime brigade, and even more silly doing numerous trips back to the laundry past those dining al fresco to check if the machine had finished its cycle. 

When Chris’s sister came to visit us in New Zealand over ten years ago, she was amazed that our washing machine took less than half an hour to do its business. This one here at the Marina is obviously of the same kind that she had; it took an hour and a half! By the time I hung the washing on my little line beside the canal, I wondered whether it would have time to dry before the evening damp arrived.

When we arrived at the marina, there was much happy noise from a sealed play area across the other side. A group of Moslem girls, in sensible trousers as well as the obligatory headscarves were playing netball with great enthusiasm; I figured there must be a school nearby.

More recently when I googled Savile Town to check which county we were in, I found this to be one of the least white British towns. In the 2011 census there were only forty eight who identified as “white British”, this of the 4,033 recorded as living here. Perhaps those forty eight were all here at the marina, because apart from the netballers, I have only encountered “white British” types. No doubt we will make our own impressions over the next week or so we are here.