Hot cruising to Anderton

It’s been another beautiful day for boating; pleasantly cool first thing, warming up as the day went on and becoming seriously warm this afternoon, encouraging us to sit tight in the boat.

We wanted to arrive at Anderton at around ten thirty; the cruising time we estimated at two to two and a half hours, so adding on another half hour for waiting for the slot to navigate Saltersford Tunnel, we left at half seven. As it turned out, we arrived at the tunnel in time to go through earlier, but didn’t want to.

So we tied on the tunnel waiting moorings for 45 minutes, leaving the engine running as the washing machine was working away.

Both Saltersford and Barnton Tunnels were negotiated undramatically; we did indeed get to our preferred mooring near the Stanley Arms just on half ten.

There’s a certain amount of boat traffic about and plenty of towpath walkers. Before lunch we took a walk up to Barnton Co-op for perishables, such as a pie to have with salad tonight and some salad stuff to go with it. (I know, shades of “If we had some bacon we could have bacon and eggs, if we had some eggs”.)

After lunch we took a very easy stroll along the towpath to see who’s about. Ian and Kath were on board Sanity, so we had a brief cross-cut conversation with them; we’ll be catching up properly tonight. We didn’t spot anyone else we knew and finished off with ice creams from the CRT shop at the lift.

Back at the boat I topped up the batteries and refilled the stern greaser tube. I had planned to pump out the water from the stern bilge, but it was just too much like the opening number of Kiss Me Kate in there to indulge in such exertions.

We’ll stay put tomorrow as there’s a major amount of rain forecast, and indeed we may hang around here for another day after that. Then we quite fancy ambling as far as Billinge Green flash on the way to Middlewich for a couple of days; we’ve got about 10 days to lose, what a hardship…

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