So, what are the repercussions of us not making the top of the Bosley Locks by the end of cruising today??? We would be locked up on the Macclesfield Canal until enough cats and dogs rained down to let us out.
We estimated that we had 5-6 hours of cruising today to reach our intended destination. As luck would have it, the weather was unbelievable.
In fact, we made it in just over three hours.
Not a lot to mention along the way except that there were some lovely gardens.
We had the brolly up all the way along the canal as the further the morning went along the hotter it got.
One bit of excitement was an electric swing bridge where you get the power over the motor vehicle to make them stop.
Then of course you have to close the bridge to let them on their way.
If you look at the water in this photo you will see a lot of churned up mud – this is an indication as to how low the water level is in the canal and why they are shutting it down on Friday.
Think the outside sensor on the boat for the thermometer is probably facing directly into the sun. The inside temperature though is fairly accurate.
We turned the towpath into a Chinese laundry because we could. We had all the clothes back within two hours, dried and folded.
Went for a wander up the towpath to check out how far down the queue we are for tomorrow. Managed to get a snapshot of just some of the fish we saw in the canal. This is only a fraction of them that were hanging around in one particular area. They varied in size and some of them were reasonable. You still wouldn’t eat them though.
Found the facility center at the top of the flight. Pity we cannot use it today as would like to top up with water but there was no room for us to moor up there.
Should we have gone cruising passed the row of seven boats in front of us who are queueing for tomorrow, we would be hung, drawn, and quartered. We will wait until we get closer to the facilities tomorrow to use them.
The first of the twelve locks tomorrow which will be done on another very hot day.
The Canal and River Trust have some very seriously heavy locks on the paddle mechanisms to prevent people going down. They have to as there are boaters out there who think the rules don’t apply to them – just as in the rest of society.
We just spent the rest of the afternoon resting out of the hot sun and catching up on some old emails. Even though there is a substantial cell phone tower in view, we had no cell phone or internet coverage. Bit of a bugger.
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