A short run and a longish walk

We've come on up to the top of Church locks, setting off at a quarter past eight and getting here a bit before ten. There was a moderate amount of traffic about on a very fine morning, as you'd expect on this busy bit of the system. It's the stretch from Middlewich to Red Bull that's common to both the Four Counties and the Cheshire Rings; under the circumstances it's probably surprising not to see more boats on the move in this last week of the school holidays.

The level of traffic also accounts for the way that the typically red stained water (it comes out of Harecastle Tunnel like that) turns up as far down as Wheelock at the moment.

Once we'd got settled and had a coffee, I realised that we needed to get some more perishable supplies in, as we won't have much of a chance passing through Congleton, and we're being invaded by Graeme and the boys on Thursday.

It's a bit of a trek from here, but it is possible to get to the Kidsgrove Tesco, so I spent the rest of the morning doing just that. It took about 25 minutes each way, so that I was back in nice time for lunch, having got two kinds of bread, extra houmous, tomatoes, baby carrots and similar stuff.

We've had a quiet afternoon of it; the weather's been OK, but there's a cold wind about that discourages sitting out on the bow. Tomorrow, we'll set off between half seven and eight, hoping to find a mooring at Hall Green from where we can walk to the Bleeding Wolf for lunch.

One operational note: since talking about pharmacies and prescriptions so much, I've been plagued with drug selling spam comments. They're all being caught by the spam trapper, but it's a right fag having them turn up in my email notifications, so I've turned on word verification for a bit.

I'm sorry, I know it's a pain, but with any luck I'll be able to turn it off again in a week's time, once the spambots have got discouraged and gone away.