Well the other day I said we were sticking to the plan but already we have had a slight deviation. Last night our planed stop was Westport Lake but we decided to move on to the tunnel entrance and overnight there, nice and quiet, no walkers and no geese. It also meant we were ready for the tunnel first thing this morning.
A very early start for us. Up and ready to go by 8am, the sun was out but the grass still white and mist rising off the cut.
It was about ten past eight when the CRT tunnel keeper tapped on the boat, a quick run through the safety procedure and we were away, traveling by ourselves. With the low air temperature the mist in the tunnel was quite thick and a bit un-nerving, I am use to the fog coming towards us when the fans start and then passing but today it lasted over a Kilometre and we passed the 1100Mt mark before I could see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Just over half and hour later we emerged into bright sunshine again and made our way down to Hardings Wood Junction and as there was no one watching I made a perfect turn under the bridge towards the Macclesfield canal.
Since we were last this way a New Lidl store has opened beside the locks so I dropped Diana off to get a few things. As I may have been in the way just through the bridge I decided to drop back onto the main line and wait just above the junction. I think the tunnel keepers may have been busier than they expected as it wasn’t long before a boat popped out onto the main line and turned towards the tunnel, this was followed a little later by two boats coming up the locks, then as we set off a second boat came from the Macc and went that way. Pulling out from the bank to go under the bridge I picked up a blade full of something, but a bit of forward and reverse made it more than manageable. We stopped for water just above Hall Green lock, boy is it slow, there was already a boat filling before we could even make a start. Once that was complete it was look for a mooring. O almost forgot, second deviation to the plan, we should have stopped on the aqueduct where the branch crossed the T&M main line, we will be back on program tomorrow night. I had completely forgotten about the mileposts along this canal, they are like grave headstones with smaller intermediate ones.
All the visitor moorings near Little Morton Hall were full so we went just through the bridge from there and got almost against the piling. Once moored a cleared the prop with my modified patio joint weeder and this is what I dragged off. The remains of a builders bag.
Todays Journey
5¼ miles, 1 lock in 3½ hours
The Google map of the entire journey to date can be seen at https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=17mjw4LFpTYhyPS1NB_mGzeZAr913Rivl&usp=sharing
You can also see our planned itinerary at https://canalplan.uk/journey/16879_cp
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