Northern Exposure: Day 9

Scrambled eggs on toast for breakfast today, as it was Sunday.  It was rather dank and dreary when we set off at 8am, making the short journey to the southern portal of Harecastle Tunnel.  The tunnel keeper said we’d have to wait ten minutes or so, while they ran the fans to remove stale air from the tunnel.  It also gave us time to damp the fire right down and remove the chimney.  We also had a safety briefing, including a check of our headlight and horn.  Soon we were ready to go.

As usual, shortly after entering the tunnel we heard the doors clang shut behind us, and the fans begin to roar.  This time, a bit of mist was created up ahead.

It took us about 35 minutes to go through.  I noticed that there are now very visible distance markers every 100 metres; they count up to 1300m, then the next one is also 1300m before they start counting back down again.  I saw the skeleton painted in an alcove, but didn’t get a good photo of it this time.  When we emerged, the water didn’t look as orange as it normally does.  We reckon it’s probably because there have been few boat movements recently, because we could see that where our propeller had churned up the water, the orange colour was appearing.

We passed the entrance to the Macclesfield Canal at Hardings Wood Junction, and we’re straight into the Red Bull Locks.  A boat had just come up, so the top couple were in our favour.

As we went under the aqueduct that carries the Macc over the Trent and Mersey, we entered Cheshire, so we are properly in the north now.  After the third lock we stopped at the services, filled the water tank, started some washing, and got rid of rubbish.  Setting off again, we completed the six Red Bull Locks.  One of them has an old rope roller at the mouth of the lock.

As we got to the Church Locks, a boat was just pulling away from the bottom of the two, so we had to turn them.  These locks are no longer duplicated.

The boat up ahead was a single hander, so at one of the locks I went to set ahead for him.  Several of the duplicated locks have one chamber out of action.  However, by the time we got to the bottom of the Lawton Locks we had both boats going down side by side.

We stopped at Rode Heath to have some lunch, which turned out to be good timing as we sat out some rain and a hail shower.  When the sun came out again we went down the Thurlwood Locks and the Pierpoint Locks.  We have done 16 of the 26 Cheshire Locks, and dropped about 150ft towards the Cheshire Plain.  We moored up just before the Hassall Green Locks.  There is some motorway noise from the M6 which is not far away, but it’s not too bad.  It’s also surprisingly sunny, and a chicken will be going in the oven to roast shortly, so all is well.  We are obviously wondering what impact the coronavirus will have on our trip.  At the moment we plan to continue doing what we’re doing until we’re told we can’t.

8 miles, 16 locks.  (124 miles, 76 locks)