Tuesday 17th May
It’s taken me a long time to discover I could do the date in a different colour – derrrr!
Anyway, enough of my lack of computorial skills, today we have wended our rather soggy way about 6 miles nearer to Manchester and are at Boothstown. It has rained all day near enough but it has finally stopped, hurrah! This is another lovely rural mooring near a small marina and a pub with a shop about 5 minutes up the road, very handy.
We actually managed to get George to the pub this afternoon. Although it was still raining I had spotted a covered area outside where we could sit. Just recently it has been too wet to sit outside or too cold or both. It is a lot warmer today than it has been of late so sitting outside would be ok. It took quite a long time to get him there, he is so slow now that even a few hundred yards take an age, bless. We had to go back down the towpath, past the pub, which is on the other side of the canal and over the bridge. He seemed to enjoy the walk and the pub, especially when Ken opened his peanuts, because the bag split and a load went all over the floor! They soon disappeared!
Tomorrow we enter the dreaded Manchester! We are going to Castlefield in the morning to moor up first, then we have to phone BW to book a passage up the 19 locks after the ‘Rochdale Nine’. Only 4 boats a day are allowed up and down these locks so we are hoping to do the Rochdale Nine flight on Thursday and book for the next lot of 19 locks on Friday. We don’t want to be doing any of these locks at the weekend when there may be an antisocial element about.
If we can’t book the locks for Friday we will have to stay at Castlefield until Monday which at least is a safe mooring if a little claustophobic I have heard.
