To Macclesfield and back

1st & 2nd October

We had a good night's sleep on our new mooring, despite the slight lean caused by the fact that we were sitting on the silt. We made a prompt start and Sheila reversed Sanity off the mud. She came free without too much trouble but there is only just room to swing the stern round in the Marple direction to get her clear of the concrete edge.

We boated down to the water point and filled the tank, then set off for Macclesfield. It was a pleasant autumn morning but quite chilly. The pound is still very low making it hard work to get through each of the many bridge holes. After almost every one, a cloud of black sodden leaves can be seen in the wake and it is necessary to chuck back to throw their little friends away from the propeller.

It all made for a slowish run. I must admit that I left Sheila to get on with it for much of the time and stayed below checking e-mail and uploading the latest version of the definitive list of Braidbar boats to the files area of the Braidbar Owners' Group on Yahoo.

The main breaks for me in this activity were feeding Sheila a mug of coffee and responding to her call "Bow please!" When I went out there, there was the corner of a pallet visible above the surface of the water up ahead. Since we are rather short of kindling at the moment, this was a welcome sight.

Recovering it was a bit more of a struggle than usual. As I leant out and got hold of it with the boathook, Sheila brought Sanity to a dead stop. The pallet proved to be tied to a metal gate with some bailer twine, so, whilst holding the pallet in one hand to prevent it getting away, I had to remove my trusty Swiss Army knife from my pocket with the other. And then open it.

Eventually, however, the beast was hauled on board and stood on its end in the well deck to drain.

We got to Macclesfield after about three and a half hours and moored on Gurnett Aqueduct bow to bow with Stewart Hooper's working boat Annie. There was no sign of Stewart so we couldn't buy coal from him then.

After lunch we trekked down into Macclesfield and had a successful session buying socks for me and ordering new spectacles for Sheila. (I'm due some new specs too, but they're doing a thirty percent discount for the over sixties, so I'm going to wait until later in the month before getting mine.)

On our way back we found that Priscilla had also tied on the aqueduct, so we stopped for a chat with them before returning to Sanity for a quiet evening. You can tell that summer is definitely over; we've started unrolling the cratch cover to keep the boat warmer in the evenings.

This morning we were getting ready for another early start when we saw Stewart pottering on his boat. This is the first time we've seen him for a year, so it was necessary to have a long chat preparatory to buying ten bags of Excel from him.

Then it was on our way, first down to the winding hole at Lyme Green, then back to the visitor mooring by the water point opposite the Hovis mill. We tied there and walked down to Tesco to get some fresh supplies, mostly greengroceries.

After a well earned cup of coffee, I steered back towards Poynton. The pound has come back by about an inch, and the fact that I was following Annie (she draws three feet) made things easier in the bridge holes.

It was gone twelve when we reached Bollington so we tied opposite the Wharf for lunch, running a washload at the same time. We finally got back to Poynton just on three o' clock, and stopped on the water point again to replace the water that the washing had used, so that we won't need to come off the mooring during the weekend.

I nipped into the yard and saw Susan Mason, who had three packages for me. One was the VHF antenna which I've left there until Peter and I can check it out together. The others were a Bluetooth speaker phone as an alternative to the Bluetooth earpiece for the mobile phone, and the cantilever mount for the computer monitor.

We've got back onto our mooring slightly more easily coming in the other direction, and I think we've got a little closer to the edge of the wharf despite having an extra quarter tonne of coal on the roof.

We're planning a fairly quiet weekend, since the weather is scheduled to be a bit wild and windy. I must admit it is nice in these circumstances to be on a bona fide mooring of our own and to go or stay just as we please.