This blog is about life on board our narrowboat Sanity Again, cruising the inland waterways of the UK (mainly in the spring, summer and autumn) and living in a marina in the winter. It's the way I choose to write it; if you don't like it, there are many other boating blogs.
...for another year, at least. We wandered along to the yard just before eight this morning to say our farewells to Susan, Peter, Gill and Peter, then ambled back to the boat to set off. By now, there was a boat on the water point, so I elected to reverse along the Deeps and turn in the winding hole at the far end. Sanity Again was a bit sulky about going backwards today, or maybe I was just not on form. She developed an overwhelming attraction for a cabin cruiser about halfway along but was eventually persuaded to get on.
The actual winding went off uneventfully and we were soon boating back to Whiteley Green in not very nice weather, definitely an occasion for the waterproof overalls. Naturally, as soon as we got here, the sun came out.
A phone call from Sheila's brother Peter meant another change of plan. We'd originally arranged to meet them tomorrow and go to Sutton Hall for lunch, but an unexpected delivery of a stairlift tomorrow afternoon swapped that for a session in The Windmill here instead. We were very impressed with the atmosphere and food in The Windmill, strongly recommended.
We've had a quiet afternoon since. Tomorrow, on to Lyme Green, stopping briefly at Adelphi Mill to call at the butcher in Bollington.
Since joining the Macc, we've cruised from Hall Green and Scholar Green to Whiteley Green via Lyme Green, a very pleasant run indeed. Unfortunately, as last year, the canal is green in other ways too, with massive amounts of vegetation projecting from the offside, from the towpath in many places and from both sides of the bridge holes, making steering through them quite problematic. If only Manchester and Pennine were as successful as the old Central Shires was at recruiting volunteer support, things might be a lot better.
All it needs is some regular working parties with basic tools to slash it all back and keep the cut looking spruce and trim. We've seen volockies on the Bosley flight, and very helpful they were, but no sign of other volunteer input. I can't believe that the citizens of Cheshire East are less supportive than those of East Staffs or South Derbyshire.
Hey ho, we set off just on eight, as planned, and I steered us through Macc itself and on to Bollington. There was actually space on the new pontoon at Macc, though of course there might have been a boat there overnight which set off early like ourselves. Gurnett Aqueduct, on the other hand, was pretty well rammed.
We encountered a couple of boats going through the narrows behind Hurdsfield (where else?) but had no problem getting by. As expected, it took a smidgen over two and a half hours to get to Whiteley Green, where we found just one space, fortunately about 80' long.
We've been peacefully recovering here, sitting out the rain which arrived over lunchtime. It had pretty well cleared by three, so we walked into Bollington along the Middlewood Way, an excellent route to get to the shops. I mainly wanted to restock on meat, so we went to the far end of the stretch through Bollington, debouching onto Grimshaw Lane and walking down the hill to the butcher, one of two just there.
I wanted some more fresh veg, so we walked back along the Way to the exit for the Co-op, just before the viaduct going north, and popped down to use the nice new store down there. It's a bit of a test of determination to get back up the steps to the viaduct, but we did it and were soon strolling along with filled day sacks.
It's less than 90 minutes from here to the Deeps at Poynton, so we'll have a lazy start in the morning – no use turning up there before 10, we'd never find a space near the far end where we want to be. I'm thinking of the Ocado delivery here...
All seemed well with the Webasto controller last night and it looked fine at half six this morning. But it wouldn't start the heater... It said it was, but nothing happened. So we decided to head back to Poynton in the hopes of getting it fixed on Monday. The nearest winding hole was at Bridge 33, the far side of Hurdsfield, but when we got there, although there was plenty of length, we couldn't get the bow far enough onto the mud to get round. In fact, we got well stuck for a bit but finally extricated ourselves.
We went on to where the Peak Forest hire base used to be and were able, with a little trouble, to wind there. Then we plodded back to Whiteley Green. Meantime, I had texted and phoned Peter with the bad news and cancelled our rendezvous with Ian and Sharon.
After consulting the expert, Steve Wedgwood at Kings Lock chandlery, Peter gave us a call and said he'd come out to us today. No wonder we love Braidbar and the Masons. He got here around half two, in the middle of a very busy day for himself, and spent time checking out the basics of fuel, water and power before swapping the controller for a basic one. The heater promptly started. Which it also did when he put the first one back...
(Scratches head.)
Anyway, he's left us with the basic one, which we'll see how it does over the rest of the weekend. We're going back to Poynton tomorrow anyway, where hopefully we'll be able to have our evening with Ian and Sharon.
The batteries finally reached float after six and a bit hours last night. I reckon that the bank is on its last season; we had an interesting conversation with Peter about recent advances in maintenance free batteries – something to think about for September, probably.
Andy got cracking first thing and by ten all was finished and checked over by Peter. I had a session with Susan bringing the Braidbar Boat list up to date, including the next shell to be delivered, which will be number 165. I've got a bit of maintenance to do on that database to increase the engine options as the new bunch includes an electric boat and one with a Russell Newbery.
We set off just before eleven. I set out to wind outside the yard, but a combination of Tiree on the water point and a gusty wind in the wrong direction made it too difficult, so we went on to High Lane instead. In any event, I wasn't sorry to have a run away from the yard and back again just to make sure that all was well with the engine's fuel supply before we headed off. There was, naturally, no problem. When we stopped for the day at Whiteley Green, I lifted the engine boards and checked all the new joints in the pipework – again, all was well.
Whilst we were boating, I finished off making some bread I'd started first thing, so we were able to have hot rolls for lunch as we boated along. After a quiet post-prandial interlude, we walked along the Middlewood Way to Bollington and did a bit of top up shopping in the Co-op there. It's just over a mile each way and on the flat, of course, apart from the start and finish.
Tomorrow, on to Gurnett Aqueduct for a rendezvous with Ian and Sharon on Bunnies Warren.
It’s been another couple of laid back days, in marked contrast to all the people taking a canal break this half term. The reopening of Shebdon Embankment and thus the Four Counties Ring has not stopped people coming round the Cheshire Ring as we thought it might. We’ve seen a steady procession of Black Prince, Alvechurch and Heritage/Sherborne Wharf hire boats chugging (and in some cases zooming) past. (Mind you, as we type this, privateer Destiny has just charged past, moving us back and forth on our mooring despite the spring at the stern).
We even saw four Empress line boats from Nantwich come past one after another this lunchtime. I don’t think it was a formally organised convoy, they must just have followed each other up the Marple Locks this morning.
Meanwhile, we had a long lie in yesterday and then chugged down to the Macclesfield town moorings for a trip to Tesco. After lunch, we ambled on through Bollington to Whiteley Green for the night. It’s a good mooring only spoilt by a tedious data connection on T-mobile which kept dropping out, switching from 3G to GPRS or else just so foozling the modem that it had to be unplugged and reconnected.
Nonetheless it was good enough to look up the words of “My name is John Wellington Wells” from The Sorcerer and even to find a brilliant amateur performance thereof on YouTube:
Sheila provided some local entertainment by sitting in the well deck and continuing to dismantle my abortive vee fender. It’s not clear why this was of such interest to the passing gongoozlers, but I guess it’s good to bring a little pleasure into people’s lives however you do it.
This morning, we woke early and had to spend some time in bed drinking tea and listening to the Today programme before we got up. Sheila steered through to Poynton, where we stopped to top up the water tank and start a wash load. Then we ignored our mooring and came straight on through to Deer Farm Bend. It was a remarkably fine day, which is nice for those on holiday. We, of course. get the benefit regardless.
The data connection is much better here so we’ve had a quiet afternoon, Sheila proof reading and Bruce downloading the product of other people's proofreading, in this case from the MobileRead Forum, as a change from Project Gutenberg.
Tomorrow it’s on to Marple for another physio appointment and then back to the mooring before the weather breaks on Friday.
