Nights interrupted by stags and owls

29th & 30th October

There’s not a lot to say today; this post is going to be about noisy stags, noisy owls and a walk in the woods.

When I last posted we were tied at Deer Farm Bend. The herd opposite contained a magnificent stag with a great opinion of himself, and he spent the whole time we were there telling the world about it. When I woke in the middle of the night, you could still hear this noise something between a cow bellowing and a pig squealing. It seems that rutting stags get by with very little sleep.

Fortunately, we weren’t in a hurry the next day and after a leisurely start I steered through to Marple where once more we were fortunate to find a mooring opposite the service block. There continues to be a lot of boats about, but by timing it correctly some of them had moved off their overnight moorings by the time we wanted one.

Quantities of shopping were done and I made another visit to the physio. After lunch, we pushed across and refilled the water tank and then it was the routine of winding in the junction (made more difficult by boats tied in weird places) and returning to Poynton.

Although the fallen leaves continue to make boating a little tricky, it’s worth it for the display of colour on the trees at this time of year. No need to visit New England, just come boating on the Macclesfield Canal.

We managed to get into our mooring quite snuggly; the bar of silt is being washed away by our own boat movements. Last night’s entertainment was provided by a number of tawny owls, mostly going whoo-whoo, but there was the odd ki-wick in amongst them. In the middle of the night, this performance had largely stopped (owls are crepuscular*) but I did hear a couple more shouts from a rutting stag. Either the guy at Deer Farm Bend has a really good pair of lungs or, more likely, there’s a herd about on this side of Lyme Park.

Today saw the last burst of this week’s beautiful weather. We took advantage of it this afternoon to find another of the nearby geocaches and to drop off the geocoin we’ve had with us for a few weeks. It meant a walk down Prince’s Incline, a route we’d not found before and which deserves further exploration.

Talking of geocoins, it looks as if the one we released at the end of March has got lost. It’s been in the possession of the same person for five months now, and he hasn’t responded to my enquiry e-mails. We’ve ordered a new coin from UK Geocaching, and once it’s arrived (which may take a while thanks to the Communication Workers Union) we’ll release it in celebration of building Sanity Again.

*crepuscular = active in the twilight