Thanks Rishi

 

Tuesday 25^th August 2020

After the marathon yesterday, today was a very short and easy day. After the late night we weren’t in any rush to get up, and we eventually started off at around 11:00. Given the fact that we had moored on the lock landing, our first task was to go up the lock – Booth Lane Top Lock, and indeed that was the only one for the day. We cruised on around the edges of Sandbach, with occasional showers of rain, and we reached Wheelock by half twelve.

We have always found Wheelock rather crowded, but today there were very few boats and we were able to pick our spot, on rings close to the centre and only a short walk from the Barchetta. Loulie took the dogs for a long walk back along the towpath before the storm arrived, and I took a walk around the town – it’s pretty small and not very exciting. The weather when it came was certainly pretty unpleasant, strong winds and heavy rain, and we were very glad we had put ourselves in a position to sit it out. We put the cover over the glass roof – it has started to leak and with the extreme rain we wanted to keep it dry.

At eight we left the dogs on board and walked down to the restaurant, our first meal out under Covid rules. It all went very well, good food and no problems with social distancing – the tables in the Barchetta are mostly in booths anyway, so they are already well separated. We had forgotten that it being a Tuesday we qualified for a saving of £10 each because of Eat Out to Help Out, which was great – we gave most of it back with a large tip.

Waiting for the diners to return

TODAY: 1:30 HOURS. 3.3 MILES. 1 LOCKS.

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