A drippy trip down Bosley

A bit of a downer was to be expected after the highs of the weekend; as it turns out, what with our developing colds and the damp weather, there’s not been much call for psychological explanations.

In one sense we’ve done well today, making an early start at seven and getting down Bosley in just over two hours despite two handicaps. First off, most of the locks were dead against us and next our suspicions that we were following another boat down were confirmed by the discovery of it in lock seven, tied up with all gates and paddles closed.

Her crew emerged to explain that they had stopped for a cup of tea…

/no

To be fair, they set off immediately and back set the first lock they left. After that we were mostly crossing with boats coming up.

On we plodded through the deteriorating weather, wheezing and sniffing dolefully from time to time, until tying at Buglawton again. A trip to the Co-op after lunch obtained a newspaper, paracetamol and some prawns to put in the second half of a curry sauce I’d frozen, so an easy meal tonight. We’re still avoiding alcohol to give our livers a sporting chance of recovery.

The other tedious discovery is that my least favourite phone, the Samsung Galaxy Europa or GT-15500, has developed a fault; the microphone is permanently muted, so you can hear the other party, but they can’t hear you. A bit of Googling discovered that this problem is not unusual with Galaxies, but none of the suggested solutions worked for us.

So there’s not much to be done about it until we get back to Mercia and can get into our local 3 shop to have it seen to. My personal preference would be to reprogram it with the lump hammer – I’m doubtful if we’ll be renewing this particular phone contract.