Beeston Lock

Here I am Rune

Distance 7 miles

Total 678 Locks 26 Tunnels

Running total mileage 1027.3 miles

I can’t believe that after travelling the country with little or no problem with the internet signal, we have again, in a short space of time, found a mooring with no internet (and a pretty poor phone signal). It will, once again, mean that I’ll have to wait until tomorrow (Sunday) to find a mooring from which I can post this one.

Other than the above grouse, it has been a fairly good day’s cruising from Nantwich up to here, Beeston Stone lock. I was interesting getting back into broad locks again, after a couple of months of narrow locks they seem massive. For the first one at Bunbury (which is a staircase lock) we had the assistance of a couple of CRT volunteers so it went fairly smoothly. I say fairly smoothly because I managed to hit the bottom gate a bit harder than I would have liked. It seems that whilst they are quite broad locks, they seem to be a bit shorter than the narrow locks, so even when the engine was put into reverse it didn’t stop the boat quick enough once in the lock. There was a minor irritation as we left Bunbury bottom lock as there is an Anglo Welsh hireboat base immediately as you leave the lock. The problem was that they’d moored their boats three abreast and it isn’t a particularly wide piece of canal. Managed to slowly squeeze through but then found that they’d only moored the outside boat on its centre line which meant that as you pass the bow it drags out towards you and then as you pass the stern it again drags out towards you which makes steering past them unnecessarily difficult. I seem to remember that the same company in Bath do pretty much the same with their boats mooring them three abreast just below the winding hole.

Tomorrow onto anywhere with an internet signal (I have Formula 1 to watch on catch-up).