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.

Downhill all the way

Tuesday 15^th September 2020

We wanted to get down the Tyrley and Adderley flights today, to put us in position to tackle Audlem tomorrow, and we also needed to take on water, so we made a reasonably early start, leaving the mooring at about half nine. We sailed for about an hour, through fairly featureless country, before coming to a water point at Goldstone Bridge. With the locks likely to occupy much of the afternoon we decided that Loulie would give the dogs their walk by going forward along the towpath; I would fill up then follow and pick them up when they turned back.

It was a pleasant spot on the water point, opposite the Wharf Tavern which has a widening of the canal in front of it, presumably the site of the eponymous wharf in the old days. I had a bit of a chat about our sliding roof with some boaters moored nearby – they remembered seeing it in the magazine article back when it was built.

After half an hour or so the tank was full, and I unmoored and set off after the rest of the crew. Before very long the canal went into Woodseaves Cutting, a long, deep cutting with a lot of narrow spots. I spent a lot of time waiting, first at a bridge and then at a pinch point, hovering on the off side while boats went slowly through in the other direction. I kept expecting to see Loulie and the pack coming the other way, but they did not appear. We passed a spot where a landslip had left rocks blocking the whole towpath – I found later that Loulie had had to lift Mabel over this, and encourage the others to clamber over, and she had decided after that not to go back over it.

Fallen tree and landslide in Woodseaves Cutting

Further along there was another landslip, this time on the off side, which had left a tree, earth and rocks in the canal, making the passage even narrower. I passed a work party improving parts of the towpath, and then emerged from the cutting, now close to Tyrley. There is a bridge some way short of the top lock, and as I approached I could see a boat stopped in the bridge hole, with others visible beyond, and I thought for a while that we were queuing all the way to the lock. In the event it turned out that some of the boats ahead were moored up, or had stopped for lunch, so the queue wasn’t as bad as I feared, though there were still several waiting. At this point I was also reunited with the others, who had reached the locks and decided to wait there for me, rather than going back into the rather dismal cutting. Loulie told me that Minnie had found – and eaten – a large dead eel on the bank; happily she showed no subsequent ill effects.

Things moved very slowly as we started to go through the locks. We discovered one reason when we finally got into the top lock. When it was nearly full I closed the offside paddle, so that I could go over and open the gate without having to subsequently go back and close the paddle. However I couldn’t get the gate open, and in the end I had to go back and open the paddle again, to allow the lock to fill completely. Going down to the bottom gate the reason was clear – there was so much water pouring out that a single open paddle at the top was not enough to keep pace, and the lock had started to empty again.

Top lock at Tyrley

Even after clearing the top lock we still had a slow passage through the remaining four. One issue was the final pound, where people were saying you had to be careful and not go near the sides. In the event it didn’t give Loulie any problems, but everything took extra time.

Once we were out of the flight we quickly reached Market Drayton, but unlike our last trip we did not stop this time. A couple of miles further on was the Adderley flight, and we had some concern that this would be as slow as Tyrley. However in the event there were no holdups, and we descended the five locks in good time. There isn’t much of a gap between this flight and Audlem, which we had no intention of starting, so we were looking to moor straight away – it was after five by now. There is a visitor mooring below the bottom lock at Adderley, which had a few boats already. In previous years we would have avoided this and looked for somewhere we could moor in solitude, but now we have become used to keeping the dogs away from the neighbours so we found a nice spot and tied up for the night.

Relaxing at Adderley

TODAY: 8:00 HOURS. 12.3 MILES. 10 LOCKS.

Voyage: 74:25 HOURS. 135.2 MILES. 112 LOCKS.

Ducks on the Shelf

Monday 14^th September 2020

We’re not under great time pressure on this trip, so we have been trying to follow a tough day like yesterday with an easier run the day after. So this morning I cycled off to the supermarket, the same Morrisons I used two years ago when we came past on the Home Run. Meanwhile Loulie took the dogs out for a nice long walk – she was originally trying to find a way onto a nature reserve close to the canal behind us, but it turned out there was no way through. So she went along the towpath to the next bridge, then round a large circuit along country lanes and woodland paths. At one point they had to cross a stream by means of a large fallen tree, like the log where Robin Hood fought Little John. The Labradors trotted over without a thought, but Loulie and Mabel were more tentative.

Little John's Bridge

We eventually got under way not long before midday. It was a hot sunny day, and the canal level seemed low – the shelf was actually visible in places, and in several places ducks were using it to stand on. Not long after setting off we stopped briefly in Brewood (pronounced “Brood”) so I could walk into the village and buy some beer – it was looking like a day where we would appreciate a cold drink after mooring up.

Ducks on the shelf

This lower section of the Shroppie is classic Telford – long straight sections, and a minimum of locks. We only had one to do today, the isolated one at Wheaton Aston. After that we passed through Gnossall and then Norbury Junction, again each one providing memories of two years ago. In the cutting at Gnossall was the spot where we had moored for the night and Posie, then just a small puppy, had climbed off up the bank in the dark, with only a small light on her collar to tell me where she was.

A couple of miles past Norbury Junction we had our eyes on a couple of visitor moorings at Anchor Bridge. The first one we came to was full, but on the other side of the bridge there was space, no shelf and we found a very nice mooring on rings. We put our chairs on the stern deck and broke out the lager. Across the canal from us was a big house – we saw a woman looking out the window at us and decided she was the madwoman from Psycho. A little later she came out and walked around her grounds with a spaniel, not so dangerous looking after all.

Moored at Anchor Bridge

TODAY: 6:15 HOURS. 16.7 MILES. 1 LOCK.

Voyage: 66:25 HOURS. 122.9 MILES. 102 LOCKS.

Don't Tell Him, Pike

Sunday 13^th September 2020

We were woken a bit early for a Sunday, by the people arriving in the museum ready for the day. It’s a “living museum” with a very large area full of houses and buildings representing the industries of the Black Country a century or more ago. There are a lot of people dressed in period costume playing the parts of the various workers and members of the public of the time. The pool where we were moored is just “behind the scenes”, not part of the historical area, and there was a small gate where the actors popped out for a short break, often with a cigarette.

In the end we got under way at about half ten, and headed back to the Main Line. Soon after we left there was a small drama on the towpath – an old women collapsed, and I asked if they needed help. Her companion (daughter as it turned out) said yes, but as I was manoeuvring to land other people on foot came along and started to help. The women had two dogs with them, and ours were going wild, and in the end we were causing more distraction than any help we could offer, so we moved on.

We rejoined the main canal at the top of the Tipton locks, and turned left, west, towards Wolverhampton. Compared with yesterday the canal is more curving, this is a Brindley canal now, but it has been improved by Telford in places. Most notable is the Coseley Tunnel, which we went through quite soon. This is 360 yards long, but it is very unlike the tunnels we are used to close to home. It is easily wide enough for two boats to pass, with wide paths for pedestrians on both sides in addition, and the roof is very high as well, more like a very long bridge than a tunnel.

The water continued to be very clear, though as we travelled it slowly returned to the muddy opacity we are used to elsewhere. By the time we were most of the way down the Wolverhampton flight it was back to normal. While it was clear we saw hundreds of small fish, which we guessed were roach, something confirmed by some fishermen we passed. At one point as I was looking down at them there was a sudden rush and a dark shape shot out of the depths – a pike, trying to catch one unawares.

At Deepfields Junction we passed the end of a short (2 mile) dead end branch – originally this formed a twisting loop which would have joined the main line further back along our route. About three winding miles further on we came to another junction, at Horsley Field – this one heads out into the complicated network north of the main line; we have passed other connections to that in the last couple of days.

Just round the corner we came to a small pool and the top lock in the Wolverhampton flight, 21 locks which would be the main meal of the day. We were very close to the centre of Wolverhampton at this point, just outside the inner ring road, but it did not seem that way. It is not a high-rise city, and there was a fair amount of greenery around the canal, so we were unaware of the amount of built-up area around us.

Wolverhampton Flight

The 21 locks are well maintained and very consistent, so it was possible to get into a nice rhythm. We passed another boat coming up the top lock as we started down, and the guy working the gates made a remark to me about stepping across “or don’t you do that?”. I didn’t immediately twig, but a bit of thought and it made sense. Going down, as your boat leaves the lock you will need to close both gates. There’s no bridge at the bottom end, so one method would be to close one gate, then walk all the way up the lock, cross over and then back down to close the second gate. A faster way is to close one gate then walk out along it and step across the gap to the other gate, then close it and off you go – saving two walks along the length of the lock. The gap is only about three feet, so perfectly safe as long as you don’t worry about the drop into the water below. I worked out the optimum sequence, which included dropping the paddles and using the boat roof as a bridge as she leaves, and then stepping back across the gap once the lock is empty. Loulie refused to look back to see me stepping over the gap, but it is perfectly safe.

As I said the locks themselves were in good condition and easy to work, especially going down, when the undertow is always less so keeping the boat steady is easier for Loulie. We passed a few people going the other way as well, particularly early on, each one making things a little easier for one lock at least. Although we were still very much in Wolverhampton we didn’t see much of it, one lock had a factory overlooking it but for the most part trees blocked our view of any housing and it was all very pleasant. There was just one pound where the water was rather low. We had been warned by people going the other way and Loulie had to feel her way very carefully along, getting stuck a couple of times but getting through OK.

At the bottom of the flight at Aldersley Junction the exit from the last lock is straight out onto the Staffs & Worcs Canal – the lock landing is just round the corner. We turned right up the canal northwards, but we only had to go half a mile before we came to Autherley Junction, and the mouth of the Shropshire Union on the left. We had to wait a while as a boat was coming out, and the stop lock here had become rather difficult to work, but soon we turned in, and we were back on waters we had travelled before, two years previously.

Autherley Junction - onto the Shroppie

After squeezing through the stop lock (the gates won’t open fully so it’s a tight fit getting out) we carried on up the Shroppie for a mile or two, passing the Wolverhampton Boat Club on the left, very neat and trim. A little further on, at Bilbrook past the Pendeford Bridge, we stopped at some 48 hour moorings. There were rings there but even so, this being the Shroppie, we were not surprised to find that there was quite a ledge and we had to deploy the gangplank for the dogs. Loulie took them off for a walk while I tidied up the moorings, finding a spot which minimised the gap, and we settled down for a comfortable night.

Moorings (and a cow) at Bilbrook

TODAY: 6:30 HOURS. 9.8 MILES. 22 LOCKS.

Voyage: 60:10 HOURS. 106.2 MILES. 101 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.