If I was to say it rained last night it would be somewhat an understatement, as we went to bed it was hammering it down, the next thing was thunder. Every time I woke up it was still raining even at 8am this morning, so it looked like a late start, but by 10 am the sun was out and apart from a few small clouds stayed with us all day. One of the things we couldn't understand was the large drips landing on the roof as we were nowhere near any trees. This morning the mystery was solved, we had moored directly under some high voltage cables so the drips had quite a fall before hitting the boat.
We pushed off at quarter past ten and were soon crossing the aqueduct, I think this is the third one to be built in this spot and was originally capable of taking wide boat which could then go up above Big Lock into Middlewich, now it limits travel to just narrow beam craft.
We moored a short way above Big Lock and headed for Tesco to top up for the journey. I took the opportunity to clean out the rain monitor, it only recorded 0.3 mm last night. Inside I found a very large spider and a very small one. there were also 2 spider carcasses which I guess were dinner for the large one. All were evicted and the web cleaned from the measuring cradle so that it see sawed freely. The spiders love getting up in here for some reason.
There were two Volockies on the Middlewich locks who were well on the ball and they soon assisted us up through the first 2 locks, we had to wait for a small boat to drop down the top lock before we could proceed. Much to our surprise there were very few boats moored at Middlewich Narrowboats, its normally single file traffic through there.
Up to Kings Lock which was against us, we just started dropping it and a boat came down the canal.
I said it rained a lot last night, the road opposite the salt works was still flooded, I am always surprised the speed motorists will hit a bit of flooded road.
We pushed on to Rumps Lock which was also against us. The Thai Restaurant Kin Ardi is closed until September as they are collecting new dishes from Thailand. (must be a good take a way)
We met a few boats between here and Wheelock but non of them assisted our journey. We stopped for water at the Wheelock services where there was a good sized dead rat by the mooring post, I deposited it in the waste bin.
Once full of water we were off again this time having moor luck with the locks, the offside bottom lock had a gate open and the second lock only had a couple of feet to drain. Above the lock Diana picked a few Blackberries on he offside just before the old railway bridge.
We then stopped for the night just through the old railway bridge before Saw Pit Lock, there were loads of free moorings in Wheelock had we wanted to stop there.
Today's Journey 
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