Saturday 7th May
We left the top of the flight at 7-30 am this morning and arrived at Henhurst Visitor Moorings near the Leigh Branch junction and Henhurst Lock, no 86, at 11-15 am. Not bad, 21 locks in under 4 hours. We didn’t meet another boat until the penultimate lock so we had to fill most of them too. The forecast was pretty grim but as it turned out it rained once when we were about halfway down and again just as we were mooring up, which wasn’t too bad at all.
When the rain eased off Ken and I went to Morrison’s for a few essentials then we may have tripped into the pub on the way back! And, funnily enough, later on B and B tripped into the pub on their way back from Morrison’s too! I don’t know how they knew we were there!
Back at the boats the sun came out so we sat outside for a while but it soon rained again. We heard later on that BW have shut the Wigan flight now because of a broken paddle so we were lucky to have nearly finished before it happened. Next Monday they are also placing restrictions on the times most of the locks we have done so far will be open because of a shortage of water. Fortunately we have done all the flights now on this canal. We have about 25 miles to go until we get to Melling where we will turn round and head for …………….. well that’s a problem because we were going to go on the Rochdale and the Huddersfield but they are both on water restrictions already. We’ll have to make a decision when we get to Manchester.
