Northern Exposure: Day 10

It’s been a lovely sunny day today, and even a little bit warm in the sunshine.  We set off about 8.15 straight into the Hassall Green Locks.  The lower of the two has the M6 only yards away; I always look out for this lock from the motorway — if you’re going south, it’s not far from Sandbach services.

The next bridge could hardly be more different from the M6 bridge just a couple of hundred yards behind.

We had a good road down the locks, with almost all of them in our favour.  Only the non duplicated one, number 62, was completely empty.  The bottom lock at Wheelock is overlooked by a pretty cottage.

There’s a three mile section before the next lock, and hundreds of new houses have been built along the canal.  When we got to the lock, a boat was just coming out — and the same thing happened at the next one.  It’s been good to see a few boats on the move, because the past couple of days it’s felt as if we were pretty much on our own on the system, with the country in the grip of coronavirus fears.  Several of the boats have been hire boats, so it seems other people are having normal holidays too.

On the approach to King’s Lock, a boat drifted out in front of us and was soon right across the canal.

Adrian jumped off to pull it back in, and it turned out there was actually someone on board.  It was a shared ownership boat, and there was a tale of a boater being rushed to hospital and the boat being secured in a hurry.  Adrian and a chap from another boat tied it to rings rather than pins, so at least it’s now properly secure.  Once that was done we went straight into King’s Lock as a boat had just come up.

We found another boat coming up the top of the three Middlewich locks too, which also meant the middle one, which is round a ninety degree bend, was also in our favour.  We moored up by the park and had a lateish lunch, before walking to a supermarket for some food for the next few days.  There were a few signs of panic buying, with no pasta or loo rolls to be seen, not that we needed any.

We’ve had various interesting emails today: updates on stoppages that we’re interested in, and news that the Crick Boat Show has been postponed — it might happen later in the year, apparently.  A number of boats have been past, and one of them turned out to be the fuel boat, Halsall, so we flagged down Lee and filled up with diesel and got another couple of bags of coal.

8 miles, 18 locks.  (132 miles, 94 locks)