Some serious boating

It's ironic that, if the Bridgewater Canal Company manned its phones competently, I'd have paid them £40 on Thursday and we'd still be ambling along their waters today. As it is, we put in the longest day's boating we've ever done, I reckon, and travelled from Plank Lane to the north portal of Preston Brook tunnel in 9 hours and 35 minutes.

Normally, one or other of us is steerer (and therefore in charge) for the day, but for marathon days like yesterday, we work a two hours on, two hours off system. For much of the time, we were cruising at between 3.7 and 4.1 mph, slowing to just under 3 mph for moored boats and fishermen. The canal is deep and wide enough to allow that, just as you seldom need to slow much for moored boats on a river. We watched carefully to see that we weren't moving the boats very much or at all.

All other tasks and meal breaks are taken whilst underway, including the inevitable wash load! The last stretch, from Moore to Preston Brook isn't as deep in places, so we went slower. We had to stop once, briefly, to check the prop after passing through Sale, but whatever it was had cleared by the time we'd stopped, the reversing to slow down acting as a thorough chucking back.

In the past on very long runs, we've had problems with the battery bank overheating and starting to overcharge. It gets very warm down below the engine boards and the batteries end up at around 40ºC. The charge voltage should be reduced under those circumstances but that's not a facility available on the domestic alternator fitted to a Beta 43. It's what did for our Trojan batteries, I reckon, the traction type batteries with thick plates being much more vulnerable to overcharging.

I'm pleased to say that our cheapo Albion sealed beasts from Midland Chandlers coped very well, sitting on a minimum charge current of around 2.5 amps for most of the day. The bank was still at 98% charged first thing this morning.

Anyway, enough of the anoraky stuff already and back to the boating. We arrived at the tunnel at ten past six, so had 20 minutes to wait before we could go in. We just tied the centreline on one of the bollards provided, turned the engine off and hung about. Sheila had a chat with a passing dog walker whose great-grandfather had worked a barge for Tate and Lyle and I found a couple of paperbacks in a free books box.

At twenty past a Claymoore hire boat emerged, but we still waited for the half hour before entry. Sheila steered through in 15 minutes, to find an ABC boat full of drunken men waiting to enter. We've come on a little way to a towpath mooring about half way to the breach site, tying just before half seven, eleven hours after setting off. It's very quiet here, just what we want after the excitements of the past few days.

CRT have confirmed that they estimate at least six weeks to repair the culvert, so our decision to turn back was justified.

It's been interesting to revisit the Bridgewater, even with the hostile environment it now presents to visiting boaters – there are signs everywhere threatening unlicenced boats. Some places are lovely to visit, especially Dunham Massey house and park and Pennington Flash, but it's an essentially boring waterway, a bit like driving along a motorway. OK, all the petty inconveniences of the narrow canals are absent, but much of it is straight, wide, deep and infested with online moorings. There are very few facilities, none for rubbish and only the water point at the Old No. 3 pub on our route. There is water at Stockton Heath, but only if you are patronising the Thorn Marine chandlery and service point.

There are, of course, no locks at all and only Preston Brook tunnel at one end. And most of that is actually CRT water, the boundary being just inside the north portal.

We're glad to get back onto the friendlier waters of CRT. Tomorrow, we plan to move on either to Barton Pool, between Saltersford and Barnton tunnels, or carry on back to Anderton. From either mooring, we can walk up to Barnton village, where there is a Co-op, to restock on perishables. We'll then carry on to spend a couple of days in Middlewich, doing a more thorough restock from the choice of supermarkets there.