Tuesday 22 May
The first task today was to get the boat off the bank in a gale force onshore wind! This was hampered somewhat by the three garden gnomes, I mean fishermen, who had parked themselves directly behind us. I would have reversed off straight through them but Ken was more polite. In the end I drove off while Ken pushed the front out, I revved rather a lot and soaked the nearest one. I did warn him but he decided not to move so …..
Today we have travelled 8.5 miles, 8 locks and 2 swing bridges to Littleborough. We have found a very nice mooring in a little arm beside Bent House Lock, no 46 if you look at 3 of the balance beams and no 40 if you look at the other one!
The day did not go smoothly though (as usual) and we took 5 hours to get here. This was due in part to the half a sofa we got wrapped round our prop just before the second lock. Trips down the weed hatch are becoming very common place on this canal. It took the best part of an hour to free the prop and we attracted several gongoozlers while we were doing it.
We have seen more shopping trolleys in the canal today than we have seen in the last 2 years of travelling, with most of the big supermarkets being represented! Fortunately we managed to avoid tangling with any of these. Another hold up occured at lock 47 which, due to subsidence, has become too narrow for 2 boats to use together so we had to go in separately.
We were glad to finally come across a sanitary station after this and emptied both of our cassettes (hurrah) and filled with water. While we were doing this Barbara went up to the next lock to see if there was any where nice to moor up. She saw this little arm (where we are now) so they carried on up the lock to secure the mooring because there is only room for 2 boats and there was one coming the other way. It would have been Sod’s law not to see another boat for 3 days then get pipped at the post for a mooring!
Things are improving now, the scenery is getting better and we all felt it was a lot safer when we left the boats to go into town this afternoon. There seems to be a different type of person walking along the towpath now as well. They aren’t all swigging cans of lager and talking rubbish for a start!
We all walked into town later and found the coal merchant’s we had been told about (we are both getting short of coal) and arranged to pick up a few bags tomorrow morning. We will have to wheel it back on our trolleys but as there is a distinct lack of boatyards on this part of the canal that is all we can do. Except, not have a fire of course, which is definitely not in my plans or Barbara’s!
We also found The Red Lion, which we had also been told about, a pub with it’s own brewery, selling beer for £1-50 a pint. It would have been churlish not to partake. The pub itself is very old fashioned but really quaint and the beer was excellent! We got chatting to a chap, partially sighted with a guide dog called John, who had done some boating and we swapped dog falling in stories.
Tomorrow, after we have collected our coal, we are going up to Summit, which is aptly named as it is at the summit.
