Getting back on the grid

 Thursday 17^th September 2020

We needed to find a mooring with good mobile signal for the evening, because I had a Parish Council meeting to attend. However we needed to make a reasonable mileage, so that we would be in position to get home tomorrow (Friday). The signal is fairly poor all the way along the Middlewich Branch, until you reach the eponymous town itself, but we were unsure how slow we would find things through the locks. We didn’t make an early start – I went down into town to get a plant pot from M&S, because Loulie wanted to give it to a lady at NNC who has been very helpful to us over the years. In the end it was about 10 when we set off. 

These are very familiar waters to us by now, and we headed up to Barbridge Junction, then along the Branch. After our worries about queues at the locks, in the event we went straight into the first three; at Cholmondeston a man from the marina was working the lock as people passed through, and at the other two we got lucky by arriving just as boats were coming out, going the other way. Loulie got off with the dogs for a good walk around the middle of the Branch – it is very rural and quiet, with very few busy roads or other hazards in the way of dog walking. 

As we left Stanthorne lock another boat pulled out from the bank ahead of us, and we followed them down through Middlewich, with things becoming much slower. There was another boat waiting at Wardle lock, and others coming up, then on the triple flight we again encountered slow boaters who generally held things up.

Once down those locks we moored near the centre of town, so I could get on the bike and go to Morrisons for food. We then debated whether to go on down Big Lock, and I went ahead for a recce. It looked as though there was space in a spot we have noticed before, on the offside just below Big Lock, so we carried on and moored there. Although it is on the off side it is a CRT public mooring, beside some open green space, and we were able to squeeze on the end. It was great for walking the dogs, and since we were still inside the town boundaries the signal was great for my meeting.

 

TODAY: 7:00 HOURS. 14 MILES. 8 LOCKS.

Voyage: 87:25 HOURS. 157.7 MILES. 137 LOCKS.

Back to Base

Wednesday 16^th September 2020

The main business of the day was the Audlem flight, fifteen locks, which was only about a mile from where we were moored. We didn’t want to get caught in a queue, as we had at Tyrley yesterday, so we got up fairly early, gave the dogs breakfast, and got onto the canal by about nine.

As it turned out there was no queue at the top of the flight, but as we worked our way down the locks we encountered a fair amount of minor annoyances, mostly from boats going the other way. Nothing very major, but people not knowing what they were doing, or going very slowly. In normal years it is easier to step in and “help out” to put them back on the right track, but social distancing makes everyone keep apart. I don’t suppose it really held us up very much.

We had intended to stop at Audlem Mill, above lock 13 (three from the bottom). However in the event there wasn’t anywhere to moor right outside, and while we could have stopped below the lock and walked back, we decided just to push on.

There were only two locks left for the day, the isolated pair at Hack Green, 2-3 miles further on from Audlem. Here, however, we did encounter significant delays, as one of the locks had a leaky paddle and was filling very slowly indeed. There wasn’t much we could do about this, so we just had to wait and help out where we could. In fact only a few weeks later this lock got so bad that they closed it for a day or two in order to replace the offending paddle.

It’s only a couple of miles from Hack Green before you come to the outskirts of Nantwich, and we began to think about mooring. We didn’t want to go past the town, because there isn’t really anywhere good to moor beyond that, all the way up to Barbridge – very bad shelves where mooring is possible at all. So we were looking for a good spot all the way into town and along the aqueduct, but with no success – the public moorings were pretty much occupied. In the end we found a space right opposite the entrance to the NNC marina, where Eileen was built. We had to squeeze into a gap, and I spent a long time shuffling back and forward trying to find a place where we could get nicely in to the bank. I got it done to my satisfaction in the end, and even then another smaller boat managed to squeeze in ahead of us.

We had stopped at about 3pm, so even after tidying up the mooring there was plenty left of the day. I went for a run, two miles up the canal towards Hack Green, and then back again. After that I cycled across town to Sainsburys to get food for a couple of days. However tonight we had decided to have fish and chips, which I got from a shop on Welsh Row, which is nice and close to the canal.

Relaxed Mabel

TODAY: 6:00 HOURS. 8.5 MILES. 17 LOCKS.

Voyage: 80:25 HOURS. 143.7 MILES. 129 LOCKS.

On the Road Again

 Wednesday 2^nd September 2020

Wednesday dawned grey but dry. I had a shower last night, because I could not start the engine this morning, it would need to be cold so the mechanic could work around and under it as he lifted it up to get the gearbox off. I had a discussion last week with the NNC people about whether we should replace the gearbox at the same time, as it was going to have to come off as part of the process. It’s fairly clear we are going to have to replace it fairly soon, perhaps over the winter – it has been getting stiffer to get in and out of gear, and failing to go into forward when it’s cold. In the end we decided that it would extend the delay in getting the parts, so we elected just to change the drive plate.

The mechanic arrived on time, and everything seemed to go smoothly. It was all done in less than two hours, and I called Loulie to tell her to pack the pack into Jonjo’s van and set off. They got here with no problems, we moved everything into the boat, and set off at about half one.

I had sent another email asking for a booking for Harecastle tomorrow, and we had a spot on the first passage southbound, setting off at 8am – and we had to be there at 7:30. We did not want to leave ourselves any locks to do in the morning, but there are few and poor moorings on the Trent and Mersey between the top locks and the tunnel. Our plan therefore was to go up the six remaining locks, then turn onto the Macclesfield Canal. This would also allow us to go a couple of miles up the canal to Heritage Narrowboats, where we could get diesel, water and a pumpout.

Soon after we started it began to rain, and it set in to pour hard and steadily for the rest of the day. We worked up six locks, thus completing the twenty six of Heartbreak Hill that we had started in Wheelock a week ago. We turned right onto the Macc and cruised up to the Heritage base, keeping an eye out as we went for suitable moorings for the night. There is one lock on this stretch, the Hall Green stop lock, just one foot of rise, and we soon reached our target. Fuelling and pumpout was very wet, but it meant that we would not have to worry about stopping on the trip south for a few days.

We turned in the mouth of the hire boat basin, and set off back, with Loulie jumping out with the dogs to give them a walk. We went back down the stop lock and moored at a spot we had noted previously; a slightly overgrown bank but not too bad, and well placed for an early arrival at the tunnel mouth in the morning.

 

TODAY: 4:30 HOURS. 4.9 MILES. 8 LOCKS.

Voyage: 15:25 HOURS. 30.8 MILES. 18 LOCKS.

 

Still No Go

 Friday 28^th August to Tuesday 1^st September 2020

Well, best laid plans and all that …

The engineer was due to be with us some time before ten, and we were hoping that he would be able to replace the starter motor fairly quickly, an hour or so. That would allow us to get up the remaining six locks and be at the entrance to the tunnel in time for our booking. He arrived in good time, and Loulie took the dogs off for a walk so that they would not be stuck on the boat – when the engine compartment is open it is very hard to get out of the door for a human, and impossible for a dog.

After some hard work, and returning to his van for a bigger spanner to release a difficult bolt, the engineer got the cover off and announced that we had a problem. The reason the starter motor wasn’t engaging with the engine was some bits of plastic which were obstructing the sprocket. The problem was that these bits were all that remained of our drive plate, or at least the plastic disk in the centre of it. That protects the metal “teeth” on the two plates when they engage to put the boat in gear – the plastic absorbs the shock as the drive starts up, by preventing metal-on-metal impact. Without the plastic disk the teeth will still engage, if you put it into gear with care, but you would be liable to snap them off and leave yourself crippled. We could limp somewhere carefully, though there was nowhere useful to go – we certainly could not continue our voyage, especially through the tunnel.

As Sod’s Law would have it this was the Friday before the Bank Holiday weekend. Clearly we would need a new drive plate; the engine would have to be raised a little to get the gearbox off, but apparently this could be done by the canal side using a jack. I spoke to the head guy at the NNC and he said they could not source the plate and get out to us before the Wednesday next week, so we agreed that would be the plan.

Church Lawton is a nice mooring, and Loulie had found some splendid dog walks; with the debris around the starter removed we had the engine running and could charge the batteries. However the idea of stopping here for the next five nights did not really appeal, so we rang Jonjo and asked if he could come and collect us. While we were waiting Loulie showed me the walks she had found, through lots of woodland and valleys, and Posie disappeared for a long time in a field of maize, like Bridget in previous years. We packed up and when Jonjo arrived we walked across the field to the church to load the van, and he took us home.

After an interesting weekend at home, which included a blocked and then cleared septic tank, Loulie brought me back to the boat on Tuesday evening, after supper. The idea was that I would sleep aboard so that I would be ready for the engineer arriving before ten. Assuming that he could fix the problem Jonjo would then bring Loulie, the dogs and all the luggage down to join me after lunch. It was very strange sleeping alone on the boat for the first time.

No dogs - too quiet

 

TODAY: 0:0 HOURS. 0 MILES. 0 LOCKS.

Voyage: 10:55 HOURS. 25.9 MILES. 10 LOCKS.

 

 

Free At Last

 

Monday 6^th July 2020

And so finally we got the word that, from the 4^th July, people would be able to sleep somewhere other than their principal residence – holiday cottage, caravan or, in our case, aboard your boat. We decided not to start on Saturday (the 4^th) as there would probably be a rush, so we started our journey home on the Monday.

We all drove over to Nantwich, with the dogs, though sadly not with Ruby. After unloading I drove home and left Loulie to unpack and get things ready, while Jonjo drove me back. We got a pump out and filled the water, and set off quite late in the afternoon.

These are familiar waters for us, of course. We had considered whether we might make some sort of diversion, perhaps up the Llangollen, but that option was limited by the fact that the Welsh stretches were still under lockdown. We also had in mind the fact that we needed to get home by the weekend, because Loulie had to help out with the Wilmslow Show on Saturday and Sunday. So in the end we kept straight on at Hurleston Junction, and left the Llangollen for another time, and turned instead at Barbridge.

We went a couple of miles down the Middlewich Branch, and through the Cholmondeston and Minshull locks, then we looked for a place to moor. Loulie had quite a lot of work to do for Wilmslow, taking memberships and entries on line, and so we needed to find somewhere with reasonable mobile signal so she could get onto the internet. There was a nice spot near a picnic site in a cutting just after Cholmondeston lock, but there was no signal at all there so we pressed on. Below Minshull lock, beyond Venetian Marina there was a place at the end of a mooring just before the Weaver aqueduct, and we settled down there. In the old days we used to try to find somewhere with not another boat in sight, so we could let the dogs roam freely, but we have become a bit more cautious about that, and so we can also be more relaxed about having neighbours closer.

Moorings at Calveley

The mooring was nice – a ring at one end and shuttering with a mooring clip at the other. It seems to me that we are seeing more shuttering (Armco) all the time, I guess they are now using it whenever they do a repair to the towpath. It makes mooring easier – with pins you always have the challenge of finding somewhere that you can bang them in without meeting solid concrete or stone, but also not so soft that they will pull out. A clip on (sound) shuttering is much more reliable, and much less work with no hammering.

The mobile signal turned out to be less reliable than we thought when we moored, and Loulie had a fairly frustrating evening connecting and disconnecting. Despite that it was great to be back sleeping on board for the first time in more than six months.

The crew on board

TODAY: 2:50 HOURS. 6.5 MILES. 2 LOCKS.

Voyage: 2:50 HOURS. 6.5 MILES. 2 LOCKS.

Day Out

 Thursday 28^th May 2020

Well, it has taken longer to get to this entry than I expected when I left us at Nantwich on the 2^nd January. Our plans were to get the winter works done, including blacking the hull, and then bring Eileen home in the last week of March. But the Coronavirus had not paid any attention to our requirements, and we found ourselves locked down with Eileen still in dock.

Even after the first strict lockdown had been relaxed, and we were allowed out more than once a day, the restrictions on the canals were only eased slowly. Liveaboards of course had been on their boats all along, they had nowhere else to be, but at first leisure owners were still banned altogether. The first concession was that people were allowed to visit their boats, but not go anywhere on them, and that wasn’t much use to us. Then in May the next stage was announced – we would be allowed to move around, but still not sleep on board. This was to conform with the more general rule against spending the night away from your main home, in holiday cottages or caravans.

No matter how long we sailed, there was no way to get back to Preston Brook from Nantwich in a single day. We did contemplate bringing her back in stages, but that would have meant leaving her tied up on the towpath unattended overnight, and we didn’t fancy that, so we resolved to wait to bring her home until the rules changed. However we did want to get aboard, especially as we had a long hot spell of weather, so we decided to take her out for a day trip. We loaded the dogs (minus Ruby) and drove to Nantwich.

Over the winter, apart from the blacking, we had some other work done – not as significant as last year, when we had the batteries replaced, but some useful improvements. Probably the biggest is that the little washing machine has been plumbed into the cupboard below the oven. It means we lose cupboard space, but t gets the machine out of the way, and it avoids a real chore of filling and emptying it in the shower. Apart from that, we had wooden dog gates fitted in the bedroom door and at the top of the steps to the stern, which will allow us to keep the dogs under control and still have a nice breeze. A small but useful improvement is little magnets on the stern gates, which will stop them swinging shut while we are getting the dogs out. We also had the engine taken out and serviced, while the engine compartment was cleaned up.

It was a beautiful sunny day, and we set off at about one o’clock. To get as far as possible without using a lock, we headed north west, past Hurleston and Barbridge junctions, and on towards Bunbury. After Barbridge we began to notice suspicious green stuff in the canal, and after a bit of Googling we concluded that it was blue-green algae. This is dangerous to the dogs, and it was bad news because it meant we couldn’t let them in the water where it was floating – and it was pretty dense.

We reached Bunbury, where the staircase lock was out of action. The algae was still there, so we took the dogs down to the road, hoping to find the river Gowy which was shown on the map. However this turned out to be a dried up ditch at this point, so we went back to the boat, struggling to keep the dogs out of the water, which they were naturally desperate to dive into.

We went back down the canal, getting used to the new positions on the gearbox. The controls have changed slightly, with the cables having been connected and the gearbox serviced; it doesn’t change how the engine performs, but it does mean you need to move the lever a lot further before it engages a higher speed.

We got back to the boatyard at about half six, and put our stuff and ourselves back in the car. It was a good day out and a reminder of life aboard, but we can’t wait until we can take her out properly.

TODAY: 5:30 HOURS. 12 MILES. 0 LOCKS.

 

Winter Window 2019

Monday 30^th December

Sunset at the marina before we set off

Cormorant at the marina

Last year, in order to get Eileen to the Navigation Narrowboat Company in Nantwich we were forced to take her over during a brief window of time between the opening of the Middlewich breach a few days before Christmas, and the closing of the canals in several places on the 2^nd January. Although we had no choice, in the event we enjoyed it so much, especially New Year’s Eve on board, that we decided to do the same again. We have some work planned on her, so at some point we needed to get her over to Nantwich. There is no breach this time, of course, and there seem to be far fewer stoppages generally on our route, so there was no real constraint on when we moved her. Even so we decided to plan the trip so we were on board on New Year’s Eve, and furthermore well out in the country so that the dogs wouldn’t be disturbed by fireworks.

Winter sunshine on the Trent and Mersey

Moored at Bartington

As we were under no time pressure we decided to take it easy on the first day. I brought Eileen up to Keckwick and we loaded up, then set off at about two, so we could get through the tunnel at two thirty. That meant that we had about an hour of daylight on the other side, and we cruised just past Bartington before mooring at a nice spot on clips. On the way we passed a boat with a nice paint job, called Dark Side of the Moon – we would be encountering her again on the journey.

  

TODAY: 2:30 HOURS. 7.9 MILES. 1 LOCK.

Tuesday 31^st December

We made a leisurely start and reached the Saltersford tunnel for 11:30. However we discovered that the circuit for the pump on the toilet was not working, presumably a fuse gone. Loulie found a bag of spare fuses behind the electrical panel, but we still did not know where the actual fuses were. Eventually we figured out that they could be found by removing the illuminated plastic strips on the front of the panel, and once we had found them it was the work of a moment to replace the correct fuse, and all was working again.

The crew below decks

In the pool before Barnton Tunnel

Emerging from the south end of Barnton Tunnel

We did this repair in the pool between the Saltersford and Barnton tunnels, and then we pressed on again to Anderton. Here we stopped on the holding moorings for the boat lift – as this is closed for the winter we were confident that no-one would be bothered if we tied up there for a couple of hours. We took the dogs (apart from Ruby) for a long walk down into the country park towards Marbury. It is great walking – mostly wooded with lots of slopes and little valleys with streams running down to the Witton Brook and eventually to the Weaver. It was a fine day, if cold, and we met a lot of other walkers, mostly with dogs. Ours had a whale of a time, and were nicely tired when we got back up to Eileen.

The chemical reaction that made Northwich famous

At this time of year the cruising day is strictly limited, and you need to be moored by four or soon after, so we pressed on through Marston and Wincham. Just beyond Wincham you pass right through the Lostock Works of Tata Chemicals, previously ICI (and Brunner Mond before that). Since our last visit they have erected a footbridge with decorations symbolic of the history of the works, including a chemical equation. This represents the decomposition of brine (salt and water) into chlorine, hydrogen and caustic soda - the basis of the chemical industry that made Northwich a significant industrial centre, beyond its ancient history as a salt town. 

At Broken Cross we passed a moored boat called Constanze, which I thought belonged to a couple who put out a vlog under the title Floating Our Boat, but we couldn’t see anyone around, and we couldn’t afford the time to stop to find out. Later I discovered that it was indeed theirs, but that they had been away on a trip down south and the boat was empty. We went on and reached the spot we had been aiming at, a mooring near Bostock Green, nearly opposite a wide area of shallows.

Moored by the wide at Bostock Green

We were only just around the corner from a new marina, Oakwood Marina, and we were a little concerned that they might have some sort of fireworks display. As it turned out they did, but it was quite short and didn’t really trouble the dogs at all. At home we could guarantee a variety of displays all around us, and going on for a long time – Mabel is particularly unhappy with loud noises, and Bridget and Ruby are not keen. So we were able to see the New Year in with a glass or two of bubbly, and five happy dogs.

TODAY: 3:00 HOURS. 10.0 MILES. 0 LOCKS.

VOYAGE: 5:30 HOURS. 17.9 MILES. 1 LOCK.

Wednesday 1^st January

Today we went through Middlewich and its locks. We started out around eleven, and cruised up just past Bramble Cuttings, where Loulie got off with the dogs and walked on most of the way to Middlewich, getting back aboard just before the aqueduct over the Dane. We did Big Lock and then stopped to take on water in the centre, and did a bit of shopping. We pulled away from the water point just before another boat, Dark Side of the Moon, appeared behind us, which meant that we found the locks in the three lock flight set in our favour, while they had to wait for them to fill after our passage.

Loulie had been navigating through the locks, and she stayed in place and carefully made the sharp right hand turn into the Wardle lock entrance, the start of the Middlewich Branch of the Shropshire Union canal. For historic reasons this is actually the Wardle Canal, the shortest canal in the country at 154 feet long – it is just the one lock and the approach to it, and it was put there by the Trent and Mersey canal company to give them commercial control when the Branch was built to connect the T&M to the Shropshire.

When we turned in we found that there was already a boat there, Otter, preparing to go up. It looked like a man on his own, and I went forward to help him – in fact it turned out that his wife was also aboard, but because of a disability affecting her arms she could do very little of the work. I helped them go through, but as they came out they realised that they had something around their prop, and pulled over a little way further down.

I emptied the lock – there was no-one going down – and Loulie brought Eileen in. As we were working through, Dark Side of the Moon came under the bridge behind us, and the man came up to help us. We had a bit of a chat – I remarked on the paint job on his boat, which was based on the famous rainbow prism design from the Pink Floyd album cover. It turns out that this was done by Andy Russell, who painted Eileen, both originally and when we modified her.

Three Amigos on the poop

What are you doing with that thing?

The ship's company assembled at the stern

As we left the lock the people ahead of us in Otter were still struggling with the stuff wrapped around their prop, so we cruised on and were clear into the next lock a short distance away at Stanthorne. After going up that one we went on for a mile or so, then looked for a mooring. After rejecting one spot because of sheep in a field behind the towpath, we stopped on some shuttering just round the corner. It seemed a nice spot, but we did not realise that just opposite was a farm where, at four in the morning, someone would start reversing a vehicle over and over again – beep, beep, beep.

Moored at Wimboldsley - noisy farm just visible in the distance

TODAY: 4:35 HOURS. 7.8 MILES. 6 LOCKS.

VOYAGE: 10:05 HOURS. 25.7 MILES. 7 LOCKs.

Thursday 1^st January

This was the last day of our trip, and we wanted to get to Nantwich reasonably early, so that Jonjo could pick us up and run us home. We got away just before ten, and sailed comfortably along to the first lock, Minshull – I dropped Loulie and the dogs off for a good walk before we got there. As we were going up a very old-fashioned boat, towing a butty, pulled up at the top moorings ready to come down. The people on her had restored both boats and were cruising the network along with another vintage boat which was a little way behind them. When we got to the next lock, Cholmondeston, we saw behind us the Otter, the boat with the disabled lady, so we waited in order to help them through the lock. As we were doing so Dark Side of the Moon also arrived on her way up – the canals are pretty quiet at this time of year, so you tend to see the same people a lot.

After that it was an uneventful trip up to Barbridge at the junction of the Branch with the main line of the Shroppie, and then down past the end of the Llangollen canal. The four lock flight at the bottom of the Llangollen is being rebuilt over the winter – one chamber is particularly narrow and boats keep getting stuck in there. We could see all the scaffolding and other building work in progress as we went by.

On our arrival in Nantwich we turned and moored stern-first in the finger docks at the NNC. Jonjo arrived soon after, and we were able to load ourselves, the dogs and all the luggage we needed into his van. We will be leaving Eileen there until March now – we are not getting as many changes done this year, but we are getting her blacking renewed (that requires a drydock) and the engine will be taken out so that the engine compartment can be cleaned and renewed. We are already looking forward to bringing her home in the spring – we may come back the long way around.

TODAY: 4:30 HOURS. 10.2 MILES. 2 LOCKS.

VOYAGE: 14:35 HOURS. 35.9 MILES. 9 LOCKs.

Floating on fuel

Wednesday 24th July

I didn't check the engine yesterday morning, because we wanted to make a flying start (best laid plans). So I made a point of opening up the hatch to have a look today. As I did so the first thing I saw was a steady drip-drip-drip, faster than one a second, from a cylindrical item over to one side. I quickly realised that this must be a fuel filter, and what was coming out was diesel. I tried twisting the cylinder, thinking maybe it had unscrewed slightly, but to no effect. Happily, just a short distance up the fuel line was an obvious cutoff switch, which I threw, and the dripping soon stopped.

The leaky filter and the cutoff switch in the distance. Note the pool of diesel.

This, however, was only the start of the problems. As I looked around I could see that several of the compartments around the engine room were full of leaked diesel - including all the battery compartments, where our (highly expensive) batteries were entirely submerged in the stuff. Rather to my surprise our electrics were still working, and the battery control panel was all normal, but I switched off all the isolators and we called NNC. Having explained the problem, and sent them some pictures of the batteries under the surface, they decided we needed immediate assistance. It's a fair way from Nantwich to north Manchester, but I sent him the postcode of a pub by the canal, and he arrived without problems at about half twelve.

I had already identified the root cause - a bleed screw on top of the filter. When I turned on the fuel line you could see it seeping out around this screw, and the rubber washer was visibly perished. The engineer fixed this fairly easily - he had copper washers and some "fuel paste" and most importantly the experience to know how hard he could tighten the screw without stripping the aluminium filter housing.

The big challenge was getting all the diesel out of the compartments, especially the ones containing the batteries. Rather to my surprise the engineer was quite happy to pour it back into the fuel tank, through a funnel with a gauze filter. He had a pressure pump which you could pump up manually and then extract about six litres into the pump body - after which you could pour it out. This was hard and tedious work, given that we would eventually get out well over 100 litres. We filled the tank and there was still plenty more to come, which means the leak must have been going for some time, though obviously not as fast. So we weren't robbed at all, it was just sloshing around beneath the batteries.

It took about three hours, and in the end we filled my two 10l cans, and another three jerrycans which the engineer took away. We reconnected the batteries, which have shown no ill effects, and there is still a fair amount of diesel at the bottom of the compartments - maybe a centimetre - which I will have to soak or wash out.

We finally got under way at about 16:15 and you would think we had earned an easy trip, but you would be wrong. We had ten locks to climb, and they were all very rough - padlocks on all of them, gates which wouldn't stay shut, paddles which wouldn't work, and a pound which was so low that Loulie grounded until I flushed through a lot of water to float her off.  We are not enamoured of the Ashton Canal at all.

Mooring at Audenshaw

Eventually we reached the top of the locks at Fairfield Junction. We didn't want to go too far because we need to get a pumpout at Dukinfield Junction tomorrow, it being much too late by now. So we found a mooring in quite a suburban spot, with many dog walkers to come past and disturb our pack - but we were far too tired to care by then.

TODAY: 3.15 HOURS. 2.2 MILES. 10 LOCKS. 1 Swing Bridge.

VOYAGE: 20.10 HOURS. 29.0 MILES. 27 LOCKS. 1 Bridge

Ellesmere Port June 2019

We were able to get away for a week at the start of June - we're going to have a full two weeks later in the summer when we plan to do the Cheshire Ring, so we had to decide what to do with this shorter break. We opted to tick off Ellesmere Port from our list - it is the extreme northern end of the Shropshire Union canal, and also has the National Boat Museum, so it is somewhere we had down to get to, and a week seemed like a fairly easy round trip. Our plan was to crank it down to Ellesmere Port on the first few days, so that we could come back in a much more leisurely fashion on the return. Loulie needed to be back home on Friday evening for a horse event on the Saturday, and we didn't want to be under time pressure.

Ready to sail

We actually set off on the Thursday evening (30th May). We drove down to the marina and put the dogs and luggage aboard, then Loulie drove home, and cycled back up to Preston Brook, while I took the boat out and met her under the M56 bridge. We put the bike on board, and got through the tunnel at half three, which put us through the Saltersford tunnel at half five. At the Barnton we had to wait as there was a boat coming the other way. As we stood there we thought we could hear music, and sure enough when the boat came out there was someone playing the violin in the stern. We wanted to get on as far as we could that evening, and in the end we moored in a spot we have used before, just short of Wincham bend.

Bed shenanigens

The next day we pushed on to Middlewich, and took on water just below Big Lock. After going up that one and the three-lock flight we refuelled at Kings Lock, and then turned onto the Branch of the Shroppie. We went up the Wardle and Stanthorne locks, then moored out in the country at a remote spot. The next day we stopped in the morning at the Aqueduct Marina for a pumpout, then found ourselves in long queues for the final two locks on the Branch, before turning right at Barbridge and heading for Chester. Down the Bunbury staircase, and then we met some first-time hirers and did a couple of locks with them. They stopped at the Shady Oak, and we went on a bit and moored well out from the bank, on the usual Shroppie shelf.

We planned to get all the way to Ellesmere Port the next day (Sunday) so we got off fairly early. Soon after we started we passed Tattenhall Marina, where our adventures with Eileen all began last year. The new people from yesterday caught up with us at the first of the five locks down into Chester, so we did those with them - I found the bicycle really useful on this flight, which are spaced out so that walking is rather slow. We stopped in the pool in Chester and did some shopping, then carried on down the three-lock staircase under the shadow of the city walls. This is quite spectacular - each lock drops you about 11 foot, but because of the way the staircase works, the gates are looming twice that height above you when you are at the bottom.

We emerged into the basin at the bottom, where a flight of locks leads down tot he River Dee - the bottom lock is permanently closed now. We went on through the suburbs of Chester, around the zoo and then headed off across the flatlands of the Wirrall towards Ellesmere Port. It must be said that the surrounding became less salubrious as we travelled, and we decided we did not want to moor close to that end of the canal. So we reached the Boat Museum, turned in the pool there, above the three locks which lead down to the Ship Canal, and headed back the way we had come. We eventually moored at quite a nice spot near the village of Stoak, on an Armco bank with no shelf.

The next morning the engine wasn't keen to start, though it caught eventually, and we noticed that the starter battery was very flat, and there were warning lights on the battery control panel. We called Matthew at the NNC, and tried doing a few things he suggested to relay power between the batteries, but nothing seemed to work. We decided we would take Eileen in to Nantwich the next day, to get it looked at, so we wanted to get on as far as we could. We went back up the staircase flight - even more imposing when you enter from the bottom and look up at the lock doors above you - and then we worked up the five locks out of Chester. We kept going up Wharton's Lock and we eventually ran out of light above the second Beeston lock, the Stone Lock.

The next morning when we tried to start up there was no charge in the battery, so we had to call the NNC for help, and waited for a couple of hours until someone came. In the end all he had to do was put a jump lead across from the leisure battery bank to the starter, and that got us going, but of course we needed to get the problem fixed, so we carried on to Nantwich anyway, arriving late in the afternoon, after a very wet trip in the pouring rain. They couldn't do anything then, so we slept overnight in the finger moorings in the boatyard.

In the morning I cycled off to Sainsbury's on the other side of town, and when I got back I discovered that the engineer had found and fixed the problem, which happily was not a failed alternator but only a loose connection. He also advised us to rev the engine hard on starting each time, to get the charger to kick in properly. We were back on the canal by lunchtime, and now we were under no time pressure, so we cruised to Barbridge and then did the first two locks on the Branch before mooring at a nice spot just past Church Minshull. I went for a run on the towpath, which was no fun as the footing was horribly uneven, and the Strava app which I used to track the run lost credibility when I told me that I had done 50 feet of climb - on the towpath.

On Thursday morning we started without hurry, and found ourselves in queues at Stanthorne and Wardle locks. However when we turned north to do the three-flight and Big Lock it was quiet again. We picked up water below Big Lock and did some shopping, and then decided to push on through some rainy weather, eventually mooring near Wincham at the same spot we had a week ago. On Friday morning we again had an easy start, through Saltersford at 13:00 and Preston Brook at 15:00. Loulie cycled home to get the car, and I moored very comfortably in calm weather back at the marina. Quite an eventful trip, but good fun, and Mabel seems to enjoy the boat as much as the Labradors - it's only Ruby that hates it. We can cross Ellesmere Port off our bucket list - it's not a stretch of canal we're likely to want to revisit very often, I think.

Voyage: 56.75 hours. 105.8 miles. 46 locks.