First the good news, we have escaped, now the nitty gritty.
Since living inside a shed we have had to rely on the alarm clock as when you wake up you don't have a clue what time it is, it could be 3 am or 12 mid day. It always looks the same. However the alarm clock which my mum and dad bought us when they came for a cruise, gave up the ghost so its been down to the mobile phone to wake us. When I went out this morning this is what greeted me, fog.
The boat going down the locks assured me it would burn off and be a bright sunny day, and it did.
When we put Harnser on the dock I took a photo from the head of the dock, today I took another one.
About 11 am the chap that blacked us yesterday came to fill the lock. Unfortunately yet another boat had tried to turn the bottom lock with both top and bottom paddles up and ended up hard aground in the bottom pound, he then started to refill the pound from the next lock with still half a paddle up at the bottom lock. When his boat finally floated he wandered down leaving a paddle up on the lock above, at this point I put him straight. Anyway to the point. There now was not enough water to fill the dock and float us off, so the chap had to walk up to Kings Lock and let 30 minutes worth of water down while I topped up the first pound where the dry dock is. When he returned he drew the stop planks in the mouth of the dock, all the time Diana was letting water down through the top lock.
Once the lock was full we hauled Harnser out or the dock by hand and when she was clear I started the engine and proceeded up the bottom lock backward to Middlewich Narrowboats yard to pump out the black tank before finally setting off home. We dropped through the three locks and moored just through bridge 172 for lunch. The autumn colours looked nice in the bright sun, no fog.
After lunch we carried on down through Big Lock, as we approached a boat was about to leave, he was sat dead centre of the lock but insisted on picking his crew up in the lock who didn't bother to drop ether paddle when they left. Once through the lock Diana left me to take the car back to the moorings. As she walked up the flight the boat who we met at Big Lock was in the bottom lock, with guess what, ALL the paddles up so it was lucky Diana walked back that way.
I carried on alone to our moorings while Diana took the car. Last weekend the Broken Cross Boat Club had a work party at Bramble Cuttings and installed this wooden retaining wall behind the new moorings they installed over the summer months.
Diana had parked the car by bridge 179 and walked back to meet me, on the way she got a photograph of these Rea that now live alongside the canal.
After picking Diana up we continued to our berth in the Marina.
As we only planned to come to the boat for a week and we have now been onboard for 12 days food stocks were getting low so we decided to eat at The Bulls Head this evening in Davenham. Its a very popular pub serving very nice food, its the second time we have been and I don't expect it will be the last.
Today’s Journey
This trip
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