Nantwich

Here I am Rune

Distance  3.7 miles

Total 3582 Locks  220 Tunnels

Running total mileage 5182.8 miles

As planned, a short day’s travel today, in fact so short that we had to leave the engine running for a bit once we’d moored up to fully charge up the batteries.

Once again, an ideal day for cruising, fairly warm, no wind and decent amount of sunshine, I have to say that I’m a big fan of Springtime when the weather is like this. Having arrived at Nantwich we then completed the purpose of making today such a short run, by stocking up again on groceries and one or two other essentials. It’s interesting that in all of the occasions we have moored here in Nantwich (9 times to date, today being the 10^th), this is the first time we’ve moored on this side of the aqueduct, which is a shame because it is quite a pleasant mooring.

The only incident of note during the day was we managed to break a fisherman's rod for him. It was one of those long poles where they sit on one side of the canal but fish on the other side with their really long poles. As I approached he eventually started to move his pole (it becomes a bit of a game of 'chicken' to see how long they can leave the rods across the water) but on this occasion he misjudged and instead of either lifting the pole to let us pass under it, or swing it away from us as we approached, he swung the rod towards our approaching boat and, I guess, caught it on the button on the front of the boat resulting in a loud 'snap' and the top end of his rod dropped into the canal. In fairness he was very apologetic about it and said that he hadn't seen our 60', 18 ton boat coming! What always puzzles me with this sort of thing is that you don't need to look to see a boat coming, you just need to watch the water in the canal since when we are about 100 metres from someone on the canalside they will see the water flowing towards us as we draw the water with our prop.

We are still comfortably ahead of our schedule, and to remain so we only need to get as far as Aqueduct Marina on the Middlewich Arm. My intended mooring for tomorrow night is slightly further on to a particularly nice mooring between bridges 12 and 13.

Coole Pilate

Here I am Rune

Distance  8.3 miles

Total 3580 Locks  220 Tunnels

Running total mileage 5179.1 miles

We made it well beyond the bottom of Audlem Locks and are a short distance from the Hack Green locks. This gives us quite a short days travel tomorrow since we only need to get as far as Nantwich as we need to get a bit of shopping. Since we are only about 3 miles and 2 locks fro Nantwich I would guess we’ll be there in a couple of hours or less. It still keeps us on our schedule to get to Liverpool at the required time.

The trip today was absolutely ideal with warm sunshine, very little wind and only a few boats on the move. Going down Addersley Flight we gave a little assistance to the single-crewer travelling behind us by re-filling the locks once we were through them but there were more boats on the move through the Audlem flight so that option was no longer available. Since he would have been meeting the boats we passed coming up, a lot of the locks would still have been in his favour.

I have to say that I do like the mooring for tonight. Quite out in the sticks, in fact it is difficult to give a named location for it, the nearest place seems to be Hack Green, although google mapping seems to find a place called Coole Pilate quite close to where we are moored, so that’s what I’ve called our mooring. Must remember this one for future reference.

Market Drayton

Here I am Rune

Distance  11.2 miles

Total 3560 Locks  220 Tunnels

Running total mileage 5170.8 miles

4

Still managing to keep on schedule as we are now moored at Market Drayton as planned. The only locks we had to pass through were Tyrley Locks, which are not really my favourite on the system. This dates back to a previous passage through them when we got trapped below the bottom lock by the force of water coming out of the by-weir. They seem to have put a baffle across the by-weir now so it is not quite so bad although I don’t know what it would be like if there had been a lot of rain recently.

The weather has warmed slightly so it is open to debate as to whether we’ll be lighting the fire tonight.

The aim tomorrow will be to get to the bottom of Audlem Locks which will keep us on track for our schedule.