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.

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.

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.

Bringing Eileen Home

Eileen Dover has been at the Narrowboat Navigation Company in Nantwich since we dropped her off in January, having various bits of work done, and this week we finally got to go and pick her up. With the improved weather over the past few weeks we have been really missing the chance to get out on the water, so this was none too soon. It also struck us that this is exactly the same journey (same end points anyway) as the Home Run last summer, but with the Middlewich branch open now it was just two easy days cruising, rather than eight days hard labour.

We had been across a few times as the work progressed, but this was the first time we had seen her with everything done, and we are very pleased. The most obvious change is to the internal lights - we have had them all replaced with LED bulbs, which are much brighter and whiter, and which also use about a tenth of the current. In the saloon we have also had a lot more installed, six down each side of the glass roof, and we also had new lights installed under the galley cabinets, to illuminate the work surfaces. Those have made a major difference to the light at that end of the boat. We've had a new TV installed, slightly smaller than the old one but this one works through the internet rather than requiring an aerial on the roof, so that has gone.

The saloon with the new TV and lights

Although those are the most visible changes, the most important one is a full set of new leisure batteries, a bank of four, not only new but a much improved and modern type. These take and hold a much better charge, and the difference is immediately apparent. We no longer have to run the engine for hours after mooring, we just switch off when we stop. There is no weakening at all in the lights as the evening goes by - in the old days we'd sometimes have to turn the engine on because of the deepening gloom. The other major effect is the heating - this now comes on immediately when switched on - it needs a good battery charge to do this, and again last year we'd have to start the engine and rev it up in the morning in order to get the heat to come on.

There were lots of other things done too - the engine has been serviced, they have put sound insulation in the engine compartment, and they have fixed the problem with the bow thruster. I also have a little cup holder behind the stern rail to hold my teacup rather than having to leave it standing on the top of the rail.

We packed all our luggage and the dogs into my car and drove over to Nantwich on Tuesday afternoon - we were leaving my car there to be collected on Friday. After loading up we spent an hour filling up the water, and then set off. We didn't go too far, up the canal to Barbridge and then along the Middlewich branch for a bit, through one lock at Cholmondeston, and then we moored for the night, well out in the countryside.

A frosty morning near Cholmondeston

The dogs got me up at 6:30, but it was a beautiful if frosty morning, and I went back to bed for a couple of hours. We weren't in a pressing hurry, and we set off about half ten. Quite soon Loulie got off with the dogs to do her half hour run - she had to double back to avoid getting too far ahead, as she is doing at least twice the speed of the boat. We went through the remaining three locks on the branch and dropped into the Trent and Mersey at Kings Lock, where we filled up with diesel. Our local hire boat company, Claymoore, has closed down, so we need to be a bit more strategic about keeping fuelled up.

Helmswoman and assistant on the poop

We paused in Middlewich so I could do some work and have a Skype call with my boss, then we dropped down through the four locks and out of the town. We only went a couple of miles further - we were hoping to moor at Bramble Cuttings, but as usual there were other boats there before us, so we went just past to a spot which we have used before, where the Dane flows down a slope behind the towpath, and there is nobody around for miles, perfect for the dogs who could run up and down freely.

Resting

Secluded moorings near Bramble Cuttings

I was up again briefly at 6:30, another beautiful if cold morning, with a woodpecker drilling away in the trees across the canal. We set off again about half ten, but the journey today was not quite so leisurely. The tunnels at Saltersford and Preston Brook with their strict timetables impose a constraint - if you just miss a sailing you can waste nearly an hour waiting, and we wanted to get home with plenty of time to moor in daylight. We had to wait at the Barnton tunnel for a boat coming the other way, but we just made it to Saltersford at 14:15, so five minutes to spare. But that squeezed our time to get to Preston Brook, normally two hours, and again we just got there with five minutes to spare, after doing the stop lock at high speed.

We could relax now, and we went up towards Moore, winded and then dropped Loulie and the dogs at Keckwick Lane to walk home, our usual routine. When I got Eileen back to the marina we discovered that there had been a bit of shuffling on the piers, and our space on pier Q was too short to take us. We moored on the other side of the pier,and I have since spoken to them - we may stay in that spot but we also have the choice of a pier-end spot on M, which might be better. We're going to have a look at that soon.

A pile of Labradors

So all in all a nice little introduction to the cruising year, and we are very pleased with the changes we have made to Eileen. We have a couple of big holidays booked in the summer - our plans at present are to use one to get down to Chester and Ellesmere Port, and to do the Cheshire Ring in the other. We also intend to get as many weekends and short breaks as we can. The great benefit of owning our own boat is that we can do that at short notice, and depending on the weather. We can't wait.

Voyage: 18.1 hours. 36.3 miles. 9 locks.