Back to Wheelock

I have another good day to report, even if we had another grotty, hot and sticky night last night, complicated by the fact that a shower of rain woke me at half eleven. It wouldn’t have been a problem but we had the bedroom Houdini wide open at the time.

/floor

Got back off again after a bit, but never really plunged into deep, deep sleep. As a result we both had a serious post-prandial siesta this afternoon.

Anyway, back to the sheep, sorry, muttons. Setting off at seven, Sheila steered round to the water point below Big Lock. Just as we were nearly full, a hire boat, Ellesmere Navigator, turned up so we shared up the lock with them. The Navigator fleet has been bought by Middlewich Narrowboats and these good people were on their way back after a four day taster session. They’d enjoyed it so much they’re having a longer hire next year.

Good to see more folk getting infected with the waterways bug.

I nipped off to the Tesco Express for you know what whilst Sheila steered past the boats moored on the Town Wharf. We followed Ellesmere Navigator up the three narrow locks, hotly pursued by a bunch of Explorer Scouts from Peterlee on one of the original Middlewich Boats. This led to a bit of a traffic jam at the top lock, which has a problem necessitating only using one paddle at top and bottom. They all stopped at the Middlewich base, of course, and we carried on up Kings Lock having had to hang about a bit for another traffic jam at the junction to resolve itself.

Sheila had run a bleaching prewash as we locked up and I put the main wash on between Kings and Rumps. Coffee was then made between Rumps and Booth Lane where I set out to lockwheel up the flight of three. Rain threatened from time to time but never got really serious.

It was just on 12 as we got into Wheelock. We’d thought about having a meal at the San Marco tonight though I hadn’t managed to get through on the phone to book. The reason for this became apparent when I took a walk from the moorings to check the state of the place; there were For Sale signs up, so another effort has come to grief here.

It’s a great pity as we had a really nice meal there last year.

Oh, one other thing; leaving the Kindle on charge all day meant that after a while the green “charged” light turned orange again after quite a while, before going back to green after another couple of hours. Time will tell if that has improved the battery life; I’ll let you know.