Long Day's Journey into Night

 Monday 24^th August 2020

Today was the start of our first long trip since my retirement, taking advantage of the fact that we don’t have to get out and back within whatever holiday I had booked. Ironically we are only planning a three week trip, because Loulie needs to get back to base to help with a horse show run by Wilmslow Riding Club. We decided that our first objective would be to go right down the Trent and Mersey to the other end, at Shardlow, and have a look at the marina there – Loulie is thinking of organising something there for her birthday next June. That won’t take up the three weeks, so we will probably divert down the Coventry Canal at Fradley Junction on our way back, and go through the centre of Birmingham. I had spent some time gathering advice about the best way to do this, preferred moorings and so on, but I was still a little nervous, both about whether there would be space to moor in the centre, and about the rough areas.

Moored at Keckwick ready to load

We were very keen to get as far as possible today, because we had made a booking to eat at the Barchetta in Wheelock tomorrow evening. Normally Wheelock in two days would be very easy, but there were all sorts of severe storm warnings for Tuesday afternoon, so we wanted to be in position to have a short trip in the morning, and be moored up and snug by lunchtime. That meant making hay today. I had brought Eileen up to Keckwick yesterday, so we could load and go, but we had builders starting work at home, so we had to stay around for long enough to make sure they were sorted out.

Under way

In the end we got under way just before noon, and up to Preston Brook tunnel for the 12:30 passage. Sadly we found there were three boats ahead of us, which meant we were queuing to get through the stop lock. We pressed on and, though it was quite tight, we were at Saltersford to go through at 14:30. We cruised on past Anderton and Marbury, but as we reached the Wincham bend we came up behind two hire boats from Anderton. They were going very slowly indeed, occasionally making as if to pull into the bank but then changing their minds, and all in all we lost a lot of time before they eventually both stopped outside the Broken Cross pub.

We might have stopped short of Middlewich, but that would have left us with a lot to do and a lot of locks to work in the storm, so we decided to press on. We went up through Big Lock, the triple and then King's Lock, and headed out of town, now looking for somewhere we could sensibly moor as darkness was beginning to close in. The problem is that the canal runs right alongside a very busy main road for several miles (and several locks), and we decided that it would be impossible to sleep with the lorries rumbling past. Eventually we found a spot just below the top lock at Booth Lane – in fact we were moored on bollards at the end of the lock landing. It wasn’t a terribly salubrious spot – there was a dilapidated factory building opposite, and an apparently abandoned boat moored just behind us. But it was nearly dark by now, we were travelling with our headlights on, so we tied up and made the best of it.

TODAY: 9:25 HOURS. 22.6 MILES. 9 LOCKS.

Voyage: 9:25 HOURS. 22.6 MILES. 9 LOCKS.