Welsh waters: Day 29

A beautiful autumnal morning, with mist over the fields and the water, and the sun breaking through.

We set off from Baddiley a little after 8.30 and were soon at the two Swanley Locks, where we met boats coming up at both of them.  Then we stopped at Swanley Bridge Marina for diesel; the price went up the other day to 95p basic, but that’s still reasonable — and there’s a pump on the canal frontage so it’s easy to get to.  It’s self service, then you just go into the office to pay.

The next stop was before Bridge 1, from where we walked up to our friends, Billy and Sheila, for a coffee and to pick up a parcel we had delivered there.  Back at the boat we had lunch, then headed for Hurleston Locks.  A boat had just come up and there were four volunteer lock keepers on duty.

With the locks being set ahead, we made rapid progress down, and exactly 20 minutes later we were leaving the bottom lock.

We carried on to Nantwich, which seemed really busy — so where there was a suitable space just past the aqueduct we grabbed it rather than going to turn around first.  We then tacked the job of getting the old headlight and horn off the cratch board, and installing the new LED one (which was the package we’d just picked up).  It doesn’t really have the look, but it will certainly light up tunnels.  We also walked up to the chandlery to get a new chimney, as the current one has massive holes in the inner skin, so is depositing tar on the roof.

6 miles, 6 locks.  (114 miles, 58 locks)