Wednesday 1st August - Pierpoint locks to Church Minshull

Today also could have been called ‘Canal blockage’, or ‘Ruffled Feathers and 2yr old behaviour’. A long day seems to bring more interesting events. 19 locks completed today, not a day to repeat too often – hard work and this is supposed to be a leisurely pursuit! Who are we kidding?

After casting off at 7am, we watered up at Wheelock around 11am. I blithely stick the nozzle of the hose in the brass waterpoint on the boat, and stands up letting go, not realising that this tap actually has some pressure. It was like one of those snakes that the wildlife experts show us on tv – wildly writhing around on the end of a stick…….. only this was whipping around on the end with me trying to catch hold of the it and once grabbed it, showering me with water leaving my face dripping… (linty) oh how I wish I’d had my camera handy, only I doubt I could’ve held still long enough from laughing to take a photo of the hose getting violent.

Alex takes a grip again.

You would think he would’ve learned, and held on, but no. So it got violent again!!

Stopping for lunch at Ettily Heath, on a hot sunny day again, we had left the towpath side blinds down to help keep the boat cool, so were sitting facing closed windows. Lynne stood up mid lunch to really shout at a hireboater going past to ‘SLOW DOWN!’ This one really did have some welly on, more than we’ve ever seen in the past. He shamefacedly did do so, half way past our boat, so we returned to our lunch.

I went to put our dishes in the sink, and realised that the bank on that side should have been at the other side of the canal, not so, it was right next to the window! While innocently eating lunch, the hireboater had gone past so fast, he had snapped the loop on the mooring pin, and pulled us off our mooring allowing the stern to drift across the canal, completely blocking it. Quickly coiling the stern rope onboard, I restarted the engine, and gently used the front mooring as a pivot to bring us back to the bank. On examination, the mooring pin loop had been completely snapped off, leaving the pin still in the ground. No wonder they get a bad name – the hire companies don’t seem to give enough advice on what slow past moored boats means, and just why they should. We were lucky.

Impatient boaters seem to abound today. Earlier in the day we had been followed by one lady tutting because some of the twin locks reverted to single ones slowing things down, and we’d gratefully left them behind waiting for a boat coming up to use our water first before they could continue down behind us. Then, I think it was Booths Lane locks where Lynne regressed to toddler hood. As we approached, we saw a boat leaving the lock and thought oh good it’s set for us, as they left the gates open. A moment later we spotted bodies rushing madly round shutting the gates. We couldn’t believe it, they were shutting the gates to empty the lock for their boat to come up, too impatient to wait a couple of minutes for us to use the lock and let the water down for them to come up.

We moored and Lynne got off to wait for them to complete their task. Lynne being Lynne couldn’t resist saying something ‘‘Didn’t you see us coming (how could they NOT, we were that close!) that was a bit of a waste of water and effort’’ - not at all rudely, just a quiet question and matter of fact. The woman almost – almost – exploded…… red faced and puffing from exertion, she said ‘WELL!!!’ and turned away from her. As they left the lock and she reboarded her boat a comment drifted past – “behaving like a two yr old, SHE knows who she is!” said loudly so that everyone could hear… erm pardon said Lynne, who is the two yr old???? and commented quietly back yes she does and she just wasted a lock full of water….

Oops I think Lynne ruffled some feathers there, mind you they needed ruffling. Ignorant boaters and NOT hire boaters at that!

For the rest of the day we played tag with the following boat, Pollyanna, crewed by Dale and Kathy. We had a chuckle over the previous events, and contentedly helped each other winding paddles – either them helping let water down, or us staying behind a few minutes to help them fill.. as there were no other boats in sight coming up. Kathy had glimpsed our layout and wanted a closer look, so we invited them both onboard for a cuppa once we reached Middlewich and turned onto the Shropshire Union. We received some good advice on moorings up ahead, as this was their home territory, and we wanted to carry on a bit further since it was such a lovely day, and it would make our following day just that bit easier to complete time wise.

Carrying on, we reached Church Minshull around 7pm after great excitement of spotting various flashes of blue from a bird flying low up ahead, disturbed by our approach. This was the sighting of our first kingfisher!