Tuesday 7th August 2018



Although Tracey had taken Brenda in the car to get a major shop, we decided to go out for some more small bits and pieces. And finished up buying a lot more than we intended and then having to carry it all back.

Sarah duly turned up at 11:30 and, after her settling and a cuppa we set off at 12:45.

So we finally leave Middlewich, heading south.

We worked our way up through Rumps Lock, the Booth Lane flight and Crows Nest Lock before the long pound to Wheelock. The levels in all the pounds are very low. It will take a lot of rain to remedy this.







 


       Manny and Eva’s great, great, great grandfather on their

       Niblett Family side, Henry Niblett 1841-1910, was a

       stonemason employed on the canals in and around Middlewich

       at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries.

       I had often looked at stonework in the locks whenever they had

       been emptied for maintenance hoping to find a mason’s mark

       belonging to him, but had never seen one at all.

       These mason’s marks were seen on the walls of one of the

       Booth Lane flight.

       They do not belong to Henry Niblett but are interesting all the

       same.

       A mason’s mark was a mark used to identify which ever mason

       had laid a particular stone.






Sarah found the locks of the day rewarding but hard work. Others just leaned around and watched ……………… and that will cost me a dig in the ribs later.







                                       



We arrived at Wheelock at 4pm and went past Mark Roberts working on another boat. He was the guy who did the initial gas test on Bridge Street and then admitted he never did the proper check in the first place. He never spoke to us.

We watered and emptied the toilet cassette and moved just around the corner to moor within sight of the first lock of Heartbreak Hill.

We had a lovely barbeque with jerk chicken skewers, a few drinks and an early night.



Day Total: 4 locks; 5 miles; 4 Tunnels; 0 Boat Lift; engine running hours 3.2

Overall Total: 116 locks; 289 miles; 10 tunnels; 2 Boat Lifts; engine running hours 155.6

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
Thursday 22 nd November 2018 We were awake during the night and watched a lovely, bright, full moon in a clear sky with a thick ground mist. When we woke this morning the world was white after a hard frost. Apparently it got down to -4 ˚ overnight. The stove has remained light since its first lighting on 19 th October. This morning was no exception and the boat was cold but not overly so, the stove having been damped down overnight. However, we did turn the heating on for ½ hour to warm the boat up while the stove was heating up. We haven’t had the heating on for some time but the times we have, has been when the boat has become cold. We still haven’t yet mastered the regulating of the heating. If it is left on too long, the boat becomes oppressively hot and remains so for a long time.   We went for a walk to the nearest village, Stockton. The walk was along a main road to begin with and was not pleasant with all the traffic and narrow verges to walk on. We w...
Read more
Image
Sunday 14 th July 2019 We went for a walk around Avoncliffe before a slow cruise covering the 1 ½ miles back into Bradford and were, yet again, lucky enough to find a place on the 48 hour moorings. Avoncliffe is a tiny, delightful place and a very popular stop for walkers and cyclists. Around the Cross Guns pub are a few cottages, all staggered towards the river bank and dominated by the Aqueduct. However, looking at signs from the past, it had once been a thriving small-scale industrial centre with water mills and factory mills concerned with the cloth industry. The up-market Avoncliffe Villa apartments bely their past as, first the Bradford Workhouse, then a convalescence hospital for injured First World War troops and later a hotel. Right our Bradford moorings, down a small embankment, is Barton Farm. The farm buildings are all Medieval and consist of a Manor House, a Granary, one of the best examples of a Tithe Barn and several other buildings. Today, the Tithe Barn ...
Read more
Image
Monday 30 th July 2018 We ambled about in the morning. Brenda did some housework and I walked up into Winsford for some shopping. The day was not good, a lot of cloud and threatening rain. Matt brought Manny and Eva out to us at 3pm. Just as they turned up the heavens opened with heavy rain. It was great to see them both, they are here for a week, so hopefully we won’t get sick of them and make them swim home. Once Matt had gone we waited a short while for the rain to stop and then set off. We passed under the two bridges that make up the roundabout at the bottom end of Winsford which we have travelled over countless times by car. As soon as you pass under the first bridge you are off Canal and River Trust waters. We winded at the entrance to the marina being careful not to venture too far into the flash because of the danger of shifting, shallow sandbanks and then started to retrace our route. This now put us right at the start of the Weaver Navigation and by th...
Read more