Thursday 2nd August – Church Minshull to Swanley Bridge

Final day of the EPIC journey, we awoke to more sunshine.. wow, can’t believe it.. both the sun and the end of what’s been a brilliant summer of travel.

Setting off at 8.15 with a mere 6 locks ahead, although advised by Dale and Kathy that it would probably take about 6hrs, we knew we were on schedule to achieve our aim to arrive in time to sort things out in order to travel the following day down to Cornwall.

We know where the bobbies were this morning, about 6 of them anyway eating bacon and eggs at the café at Venetian Marine!

On exiting Cholmondeston lock (how DO you pronounce that? Is it Chumston? As Cholmondley becomes Chumley? A bit of a mouthful anyway) we spotted Ivor Batchelor, one of the few working boats on the cut supplying coal, diesel, logs etc…and obtained coal, a couple of bags of logs and diesel topup.

10:55 saw us move onto the proper Shroppie and we reached Hurlestone Junction an hour and a half later. Whilst waiting our turn to go up onto the Llangollen through Hurlestone lockflight, a hireboater approached the bridge carrying the towpath. His son was stood on the roof. You know what I am going to tell you by now.. yes, he knew the bridge was there, but misjudged the head duck, looking away at just the wrong moment.. We heard the loud crack as his head smacked the bridge.. then the scream. He was lucky not to be knocked off the boat. As his dad carried on cruising past, “I told you bridges were hard, you won’t do that again will you?” we shouted across – “is he alright??” An offhand yeah he’s ok, followed by mum appearing to lead her son down below. We sincerely hope he was ok, it was one hell of a crack.

All our fenders completely off for these narrow locks, had tales from the lockie of many a boat that has become stuck.

Some good boatnames – Onion Bargee, IDIDIT, Light Relief – crew surname Light, and waiting to go up Hurleston locks ahead of us, The Saucy Mrs Flobster. We also passed a number of L&J boats, but didn’t get time to say more than hello in passing.

1.30pm - Great excitement !! The office building on the corner of the turn into Swanley Bridge marina came into view.

End of the journey… well for the time being anyway! This is definitely NOT the end. We will without doubt have another epic ahead of us for next summer!

In summary, this is our first year’s cruising in our own new boat, and its been anything but boring. Almost everyday something of note has happened, sometimes funny, sometimes annoying, sometimes frustrating, but we wouldn’t have missed one moment of it.

We look forward to next year’s planning over the winter, but will in the interim, hopefully have the opportunity to complete the journey to Llangollen itself during the autumn, in a more leisurely fashion.