Up the Cheshire Locks

15th & 16th March

Oh, it is so nice when Spring turns up. It's been a long winter this year, with an early start in December and a long cold finish, but the last couple of days have undoubtedly been Spring. One of the sublime things about living aboard is that whenever the good weather turns up (and we have at least some every year), there you are on the boat to enjoy it.

Both yesterday and today it's been warm enough not to need either the Eberspacher or the Squirrel first thing, though admittedly this morning, after a clear but chilly night, it was a bit on the sharp side. But with fine weather forecast for the day, there's no point running the heating just to spare a few moments of chill changing from PJs to day clothes.

We got away at a relaxed time, stopping at the tip to unload our recycling accumulated since we passed through going the other way. There was a lot of glass for some reason...

We got to the shopping mooring by the Town Bridge in the centre of Middlewich just on 10, when the supermarkets would be opening, it being Sunday. A raid on the closing down Somerfield, together with a call into Bargain Booze for lager for Sheila, and we were restocked for the pull up the Cheshire Locks. The weather continued fine, though with a chilly breeze. We worked up the Middlewich Three, in the second of which I tried holding back in the lock to spare the ailing bow fender. I shouldn't have tried it – the boat surged to and fro, finally ending up against the top cill with a resounding crash.

Investigation below later revealed that anything that could move forward had done so, including the wardrobe doors, the drawers underneath them, the fridge freezer and everything in the kitchen cupboards. The only breakage was one of our wine glasses, so not as bad as on other occasions.

It's now just under 34 years since I first stood quaking at the helm of a narrowboat, but I'm still learning.

Kings, Rumps and the Booth Lane Three were passed without further drama. It was just gone 12 as we came out of Rumps, so I grabbed my lunch between there and Booth Lane. Sheila took hers as we chugged round that odd bit to the west of Sandbach. It's one of those sections that's been raised and raised again as the land sank away as a result of brine pumping, but for all that, it's still pretty shallow in places.

We got into Wheelock just after two, finding plenty of room to tie on the visitor moorings beyond the wharf. I see the Italian restaurant has reopened, and seemed to be doing a good trade with Sunday lunchers, a fair number of whom we saw strolling the towpath later on.

We had a quiet afternoon and evening after our exertions, with the highlight being a spag bol and a couple of glasses of red wine, the last of the bottles of the Fairtrade Argentine Malbec we bought in the Co-op.

Today was another bright start. I nipped into the village to get a paper, then off we went up the Heartbreak Hill. In practice, as I think I've said before, we quite enjoy these locks. Admittedly they are deep, and some are a bit heavy, and there's quite a lot of them, but they're mostly in nice settings, and it's not a race, after all. I did the ten of them today, almost all of them with us, so that we got to Hassal Green by coffee time.

We spent the rest of the morning pottering, cutting up the bits of driftwood we'd collected on the roof, and similar tasks. I also rang BW to book a passage through Harecastle on Wednesday; it's still on winter hours, so not open on Tuesday, Thursday or Sunday, and only restricted times on the other days. In addition, you have to book 48 hours in advance. All this will change next Monday, when they go onto normal hours, and you can just turn up and go through during the day, subject to the tunnel keepers' agreement, of course.

This afternoon we had our first good play with the new vacuum cleaner. The excuse was that we'd changed the bed, and started the engine again to wash the first half of the resulting dirty linen, so it made sense to run round with the Dust Buster at the same time.

Its little bag of tools means that it really does function as a mini vacuum cleaner, getting bits out from between the floor boards, for example, and fluff from under the radiators.

I'm cheating on the meal tonight and cooking a Fray Bentos tinned pie, with mash and baked beans. Artisanal food, I think it's called. Tomorrow we go on up another ten locks to the top of Church. Wednesday will be a long day from there, through the tunnel and down to Barlaston. I plan to do another post on the Building Sanity Again blog tomorrow afternoon, then my regular post here on Wednesday.