And it's Anderton

What a good day that's been, I've got almost nothing at all to grumble at, to misquote King Gama. We got going at half seven and worked down the Big Lock in company with a single hander, then stopped on the water point below for breakfast and a top up. It's an average pressure there, filling half a tank just covered eating the meal and making the coffee.

Then off we went, no more locks until the Poolstock Two on the way into Wigan, an incredibly long pound. It just goes on and on, a mix of quite narrow winding sections, made more exciting by reed beds encroaching from the offside, and broad deep sections, often through bits of industry.

This is the salt producing area of the Cheshire Plain, so that the canal has in many places subsided and been built up again, hence the good depth. All the bridges are a flat beam design with the abutments designed to allow the deck to be jacked up to compensate for the sinkage.

It took us four hours to Anderton, a bit longer than usual but there were many moored boats, especially around the Lion Salt Works at Marston where they are having a Towpath Festival this weekend. It's been a lurkers magnet around there for many years.

Not one but two new marinas have appeared, one occupying Billinge Flash, the other in a hole dug in a field, but both quite near Orchard Marine just before Broken Cross.

We had a bit of fun finding a mooring, partly because we turned our noses up at the first ones between the sanitary station and the road bridge, opposite the ABC marina. It's a rough edge there and very few or no rings. So I hovered around there whilst Sheila went exploring round the corner towards the Lift.

She reported plenty of room, at least two spaces, so I carried on round. We then found that between odd spacing of rings, lumps under water and prohibitions on tying too close to the bridges, we hadn't got that much choice. Fortunately, just as my low blood sugar was beginning to make me a touch stroppy, two boats set off to go down the Lift and we popped onto a very good space, albeit a bit shaded.

We then found that we'd tied bow to bow with Sarah-Kate and Mike and Jo, some of the first fellow boaters we met when first living on Sanity. We've had a good old natter with them and commiserated with the problems they are having with their gearbox.

RCR have replaced it once but the new one promptly developed a bearing fault, so they've been waiting again. The RCR guy is back, hopefully sorting it now as I type.

We've also just given a cup of tea to David and Anne off Sunflower, Braidbar 165. They moor here and are about to spend a week on the Weaver.

We're meeting Peter and Susan Mason tonight for dinner, so it's being a highly sociable day. "They tickle my taste, they feed me fat, and I've nothing whatever to grumble at!"

Tomorrow, two tunnels and on to the Dutton Embankment.