Running in the rain

 

Tuesday 7^th July 2020

While we were confined to our houses in May and June we had a long stretch of beautiful hot dry weather. Now we have a chance to get out and enjoy ourselves, the weather naturally has betrayed us. It rained hard almost all day, as we made our way through the locks of Middlewich.

First though we went forward a few miles to Clive Green, a little short of Stanthorne lock, where we moored. Loulie took the dogs for a good walk, while I went for a run along the towpath, all the way past Wardle lock, into the centre of Middlewich and then back out again. Since last year, when I was using my phone to measure runs, I have acquired a Garmin watch, much less obtrusive, which allows me to check exactly how far I have run. I never find that I do a good run when we are on the boat – I think standing steering for many hours in a day leaves me a bit stiff in my legs.

After that we got moving again, and went through the Middlewich locks, a very familiar routine for us. First Stanthorne and Wardle on the brach, and then on the main line of the Trent and Mersey there are the three closely spaced locks in the centre of Middlewich. We moored up after them, and I went up to Morrisons to get provisions, solid and liquid.

We had lunch and then did Big Lock, the final one for the day. I had some hope that we might be able to moor at Bramble Cuttings, if things were still quiet, but quite the opposite – there were four boats moored there, and we would not have been able to find space, even if we wanted to share the area.

We thought about mooring just down from Bramble Cuttings, where we have stopped in the past, but the dense tree cover made mobile reception poor, and in any case the towpath is very overgrown now, and there were few places where we could even have found a place to stop. So we pressed on to another of our favourite spots, the wides at Bostock Green, where we moored quite late, after half seven.

Again, although the signal had seemed good when we were mooring, Loulie struggled to do her Wilmslow work, and we decided that rather than making a slow trip home as planned, we would just push on tomorrow and get back to base.

One innovation I tried out this evening was a hobby tray or work station, a small mdf construction with a cutting mat, and shelves for paints, brushes and a water jar. If as we hope we are going to be going for longer voyages, we need to find a way to live more normal lives - we can't treat it as an infinite holiday, and just eat and drink all night. It worked well, though I think I will try to source a stronger light to clip to the side of the tray.

TODAY: 6:00 HOURS. 11.2 MILES. 6 LOCKS.

Voyage: 8:50 HOURS. 17.7 MILES. 8 LOCKS.