Wednesday 14 November 2018 Wheelock

Earlier this week Neil and Karen from Chalkhill Blue recommended Big Lock on their blog so we thought we would give it a try and had a very enjoyable meal. I have never had Beef Cheek before but one of the TV chefs mentioned it last week, slow cooked and it was lovely. We walked back to the boat in the dry but had heavy rain overnight that woke us both up. Thankfully it had cleared up by this morning.

We set off at our normal 10am and went up through Big Lock where a CRT "chugger" had set up shop, we didn't go far before stopping, just by the kiddies playground to walk to Lidl.

Once back on the boat we were off again, The Middlewich three were against us but as we drew the bottom lock a boat coming down entered the middle one. Looking back down the canal Anderson Boats looks as if they have the whole fleet in.

We passed the boat in the first pound up, but the second one by the dry dock was quite low, any lower and we would have had to let water down.

Middlewich still have all their street poppies up from Remembrance day at the weekend. Kings Lock was almost full so the top gate must leak quite a bit. The Middlewich Swans have moved up to just below Rumps Lock, there were 30 of them here, last time we came down 2 ladies were feeding them. We had to wait for a hire boat to exit the lock before we could go up, so that was 2 boats on the move we saw today. The three Booth Lane locks were with us so not a bad run, we continued on to Wheelock and filled with water before mooring for the night just before the visitor moorings but well clear of the services. As the sun went down the sky coloured up nicely, lets

hope its a good omen for tomorrow.

Today's Journey 9 locks 6¾ miles in 4 hours.