Wending to Wales: Day 22

Today has been a day of contrasting weather, and a lovely treat.  It started off sunny, in spite of a poor forecast.  As it was dry, we set off before 8am.

At Nantwich we crept past all the moored boats and crossed the aqueduct.

We had a bit of a wait at Hack Green Locks as a boat was going up ahead of us.  As we waited, the rain started.  We ended up crossing with a boat in between the two locks.

The rain wasn’t too bad to begin with, but as we neared Audlem it turned really heavy.  By the time we moored up at the bottom of the locks, I was so wet I needed an almost complete change of clothes.  We sat out the remaining rain, which cleared very suddenly.  We were also waiting because we’d arranged to meet George and Carol, formerly of Rock’n’Roll and Still Rockin’, who live nearby.  So with the sun now breaking through we started up the locks just before 1pm.

George and Carol arrived when we were a couple of locks up.  Then, suddenly, between the third and fourth locks, the heavens opened.  We all reached for our coats — but Carol’s was in George’s bag, and he’d gone to help a single hander down to the bottom.  So she ended up in a spare coat of ours, which happens to be extra large!

Once George was back, we feared we’d never see him as he was going ahead to set the next lock each time.  Both of them enjoy their canal fix!

We were consistently quicker than the boat ahead, and having boats coming down as well meant we often had to linger in a lock for things to happen up ahead.  The good thing was that the sun had come out again.

We reached the Coxbank moorings at about 3.15.  George and Carol’s car was parked nearby, and they took us back to their lovely house with beautiful views over the fields, where we had one of George’s legendary barbecues and plenty of conversation.  It was really lovely to spend some time with them.

9 miles, 15 locks. (261 miles, 168 locks)