Our trip to York was still on the cards, just not by boat sadly. We’ve stayed in Goole to be near the train station to make our trip easier today. 

Only very slightly damp at the edges we caught a train first to Doncaster (retracing our cruise from a couple of weeks ago from Sheffield) and then back over Doncaster Lock to York. The lock each time was empty, no sign of Exol Pride, the River Don did however look really quite full.

Back in York, my home town, we caught a bus out to the East Campus of York University. The bar walls turning yellow with the daffodils and the River Ouse level with the banks. A Dutch Barge was moored up at Kings Staith and a narrowboat was clinging onto a trip boat pontoon, one of the few floating pontoons in York.

At the University we walked down through the new campus to the Ron Coke Hub which faces out onto a lake in true York University fashion. Here we joined a couple of hundred people all brought together for the memorial of Professor John D Currey, father of my oldest friend Nick. John had been one of the founders of York University’s Biology Department back in the 1964. Back then they were based on Micklegate as the campus out in Heslington was being built.

It was a chance to catch up with Nick’s family, not having seen his siblings for decades. Tea and cake was followed by us all filing into a lecture hall where we heard memories of John through his academic life, family life and his many interests. A full and varied life.

Mick had only met John once for about five minutes, but by the end of today he felt he knew a lot more about the man. The title to the blog today is what John would say to his students as they hunted for good results whilst looking though microscopes at particles of bone. I’d always known John was a lecturer at the university, but to me he was more Nick’s dad who wore socks and sandles whilst riding his bike to and from the university in between orienteering weekends.

I also got chance to catch up with an old family friend Diana who I’ve kept in touch with since we sold my Dad’s house, it was nice to see her properly today.

Nick had complied a display of photographs and in a room to the side a 3D slide show, which summed John up. A lovely celebration of his life. 

The trains were a little bit more awkward returning to Goole. Here we opted to have a curry on our way home. However we changed our minds and decided to get a takeaway instead and get a taxi back to the boat. The chap serving said they’d be able to give us a lift, so we ordered and then waited. He came out from the back with an order, but it wasn’t for us and disappeared to do a delivery. Our food then came out from the kitchen, only to be returned there to keep warm for quarter of an hour. 

Eventually our driver returned and our food brought out again. With just over a mile to go we warned him of the speed bumps on Albert Street which he coped with, but when a big puddle showed itself he didn’t want to go any further. Fair enough, the lift thing had always been a bit fractious with them even though he was the one who offered! We’d have been better off eating in and then walking back to the boat. The food was good, just a shame it wasn’t a bit hotter.

Disappointed at not being able to spend a few days in York we considered heading that way still. But with river levels on the rise again today we are thinking again. The flood sirens were sounded in Todmorden today as the River Calder rose, this is where the river flooded and swept away parts of the Rochdale Canal a few years ago, this is our preferred route over the Pennines!