Friday 5th October 2012

Friday 5th October 2012

The batteries behaved themselves last night but we had been very careful in our electricity use. The telly was only on for half an hour.
We were woken up at 07:30 by a boat going past. It had a noisy but slow thumper type of engine. The noise of these old diesel engines is great but not perhaps at 7:30 in the morning. This boat had moored in front of us in the dark yesterday evening at about 8 o'clock. They must be in a hurry to get somewhere.
We had breakfast then set off towards Middlewich. We had miscalculated our tea bag use this week and only had one left. So we moored up above Wardle lock and went for a walk to get some. We went into the shop at Middlewich Narrowboats and bought some PG tips and some old cheddar cheese. We then carried on walking down the lock flight there. The canal is closed at the Big Lock a little further on due to a breach near Preston Brook (breach info) and an embankment problem at Croxton. Apparently it's going to cost £1.5 million to fix so all donations are gratefully received. As a consequence of the canal being shut and therefore not many boats using the locks the pounds in the Middlewich flight of three are full and overflowing. This is unusual, normally they are quite well down.
Back on WD we set off following an Anglo Welsh boat. This meant that Pip had to help them down Wardle lock then fill it up again. I turned right at the junction. Our bowthruster is broken but I still managed the turn ok even though I was being watched by someone on the water point! Pip had to help the Anlgo Welsh boat up King's Lock, they seemed to be averse to lifting the paddles all the way. We then ascended King's Lock ourselves. The bottom gates of this lock are leaking badly and it was difficult to get the level required to open the top gate. A bit of extra welly was required to push the top gate open. We then wended our way back to the Moss Bridge base, passing the moored shiny new CC boat Kalista on the way. At one of the locks we met a boat coming the other way. They normally moor at Anderton but couldn't get back home due to the closure of the canal at Croxton. Someone at the Canal & Rivers Trust had advised them to make their way to Ellesmere Port. From there someone was organising a mass convoy out onto the Manchester Ship Canal, up onto the River Weaver and up to Anderton on the Boat Lift. That would be a trip I would like to do. These people had rung Ellesmere Port to find out when this convoy might be happening but no one there knew anything about it! I hope they make it home.
We then set to washing WD's port side. When that was finished we set off down to the railway arches, winded and came back again to do the starboard side. We had a valet booked for the inside but there was still plenty of cleaning to do, the valet doesn't do the whole boat.
At about 8pm we called it a day and headed off to the Orient in Sandbach for a Chinese meal. It was very nice but we couldn't finish it all.
We were hooked up to mains electricity so no further battery problems. We are going to get 5 new batteries tomorrow.

Summary:
7 miles, 7 locks. 1 box of PG Tips, 25 swans at Miidlewich, 60 ducks, 1 boat wash.