At Booth Lane Lock Christine chatted to a single handed boater coming up. He had a rather splendid belt with adapters for various items such as windlass, handcuff key and Watermate key. It turned out that he makes the belts and sells them as he navigates around. Not only did Christine buy one for Mike she also opted for a second as an early birthday present for Andrew. (If he reads this blog then it will not be a surprise for our next trip when he joins us!)
Much of the large chemical factory just before Middlewich has been razed to the ground although what remains is quite substantial. Judging by the huge piles of plastic bags outside they are still manufacturing something.
After descending three locks - a little slow as there are two hire bases here and so quite a number of beginners being show how to work a lock.
By the time we reached the town centre mooring (just under the bridge from the former BW wharf) it was lunch break - another helping of the soup started yesterday - after which we went on a shopping foray into the town. Alas the church was not open so we could not look inside. The town centre - assuming we found it all - is a single street of small shops. At least we did find a butcher (there are two!). We were surprised that they no not normally offer pork shoulder joins - no demand and so they put it all into their sausages! Any way, we did buy a leg joint for Sunday. Off to one side of the main street there was Tesco although, again, slightly disappointingly modest in its range. In any case, we were not in real need of much more than milk!
By the time we set off again, just after three o'clock, rain started to fall. At first it was only an occasional drizzle and it kept dry whilst we waited in a queue to descend Big Lock. This lock is a broad lock but is unusually slow to fill and empty as well as being very heavy both to operate the gates and the paddles. The boat sharing the lock with us had just set off. It was their first experience of canal and they had been show the previous three locks but were now on their own.
Soon after leaving Middlewich a really heavy storm arrived and Mike was rather soaked! It cleared ere long but remained damp and overcast. This stretch is noted for the rural and tree-lined scenery.
We are now in salt country and the canal passes through some of the many flashes created by mining subsidence.
Being wet and rather wet, by the time we arrived at the last open stretch before the built up area of Northwich, we spotted a straight stretch with no trees and decided to halt for the night.
The concrete edging looked quite a good mooring but after we had tied up we realised that it sloped underwater and grated when boats passed. Still it only needed a move on a few metres to find something better. As we moored we were challenged by another swan - not too aggressively this time!
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