Great surprise this morning as we were not woken up by the noisy Canadian Geese. Pretty cruisy day as we just need to go down to the junction of the Ashton Canal and turn right onto the Peak Forest Canal. From there it is a further hour or so to the Maple aqueduct where we will be moored until Saturday morning.
The purple M is where Manchester is, and the red line shows you our progress today. We are moored just below the Marple flight of 16 locks. Due to the water restrictions, they are only allowing boats up and down the Marple flight on Tuesdays and Saturdays between the hours of 8.30am to 12.30pm. It is done under the strict control of the Canal and River Trust who must let out water from the reservoir so we can float our boat.
It was an extremely cruisy day with gorgeous weather and very little boat traffic. Wolfgang and Marlene have the best boat set up for all occasions. We have never seen any other narrowboaters on any of our travels that have this elevated perch with excellent views and an umbrella which can be used in sun and rain. The guys are so proud of this brolly as they only paid a 1 for it and have had heaps of use out of it. The only concern is that you need to lower it for going under bridges
The elaborate seat arrangement was made by Wolfgang and Marlene added in all the padding. They should patent the idea and sell it!
Agh, the bane of a boater’s life – the ubiquitous shopping trolley. There are more of these in the canals than in supermarket car parks. It is a sickening sound and feeling when you go over one of these as you hope to god it doesn’t right off you propellor. We have no idea what the attraction is of pushing these into canals. On the Rochdale (were not quick enough to get a photo) there were six trolleys locked together that had decided to saunter down to the canal and commit suicide by throwing themselves in.
In this case, the shopping trolley came from the Lidl supermarket which was beside the canal.
Not a lot to report on our cruise apart from this crane who was trying to stay absolutely still hoping we would not notice him.
One of our tasks on Ange De L’Eau is to keep Marlene’s plants alive which so far, we have achieved. We have also started feeding it a regular diet of crack (fertiliser) so we can impress all the other boaters – it seems to be a bit of a competition with owner boaters to see who can outdo one another with their floral arrangements.
This is the view from our side hatch for the next few days. A few sheep and more of those pesky geese.
Rowkin Rovings Blog 