Harnser's Travels: Macclesfield

Monday 4 April 2022

Macclesfield

Well I think it rained most of the night but had stopped by the time we had breakfast. We had no plans to set off early hoping to meet boaters coming down the flight, however just after 10 we saw a Volocky at the bottom lock and assumed the first boat was coming down, wrong. He wandered down towards our boat, windlass in one hand and rake in the other, so I offered him a cup of tea. Turned out he had walked down to meet a lone, new boater who was suppose to be here at 10 o’clock but they hadn’t given him any contact details, so once he had drunk his tea he gave us a hand up the flight. We met 3 other boats in the flight which helped but the locks leak so badly that by the time we reached the next lock it had quite a bit of water to let out.
As from today the locks are only open 3 days a week and this will drop to 2 days by the end of the month.

Looking back at the hills The Cloud was now in the cloud

When this flight of locks was built they all had side ponds to preserve water supply, might be handy if they were still in use at the moment. On a couple of the locks the pond to chamber paddle gear is still in place, its a bit different to what’s on the locks today.

We cleared the flight of 12 locks in about 1¾ hours and set off passed the long line of longterm moorings, other than the services and the lock waiting area there are no moorings down by the flight. So that was our luck on the flight and it continued, as we approached the first electrically operated swing bridge a boat ahead of us was just on its way through and they held the bridge for us come through as well. At the next swing bridge, this time a mechanical one there was a boat coming through the other way and again held the bridge for us to pass.
I was rather taken with this boat we passed its a Narrowboat on a Narrowboats roof on a Narrowboats roof.