Appley

Here I am  Rune

Distance  4.7 miles

Total 3597 Locks  223 Tunnels

Running total mileage 5257.2 miles

Only a short day’s travel today since the weather wasn’t particularly welcoming. In the normal course of events we would probably have stayed put (the Wigan overnight mooring was OK and without problems) but since we need to keep roughly on schedule we’ve carried on towards Burscough where we need to be tomorrow night, and made our overnight stop here at Appley.

The only notable event of the day was passing a live deer in the canal before Ell Meadow lock. It is the third deer we have seen in the canal (the other two were dead) and the problem is that the canal has steep sides and they cannot get out again if they fall in. As luck would have it, the one at Ell Meadow had fallen in at a location where the opposite bank had a reed bed through which it was able to fight to successfully get itself out of the water before running off through the local housing. It would be virtually impossible to try to help a deer out of the water since the only way to do so would be to get a rope around it and they have a tendency to panic so even if you managed to pull it out of the water, you’ve then got to get the rope off the deer without injuring it, a big ask.

Tomorrow, without any major disasters, we should easily reach Burscough Bridge on target to get to Scarisbrick Marina at about midday on Friday.