Sunday 12th June
You know what it’s like when someone asks you what you are going to do, you tell them and they then tell you what they would do/have done in the same situation? You take on board what they say and change your plans. Subsequently you wish they had kept their trap shut and you had done what you wanted in the first place. This happened to us at Skipton if you recall. When that bloke told us there were nice moorings a bit further down the canal and we ended up travelling another 4 miles to Gargrave, which was very nice but we would have rather stayed at Skipton first.
Well, the same thing happened to us with the chap who told us about mooring at the Boat and Horses in Oldham, instead of at the Rose of Lancaster in Chadderton before tackling the Manchester 19 locks. Nice chap but we wish he had kept his opinions to himself. Oh yes, it was a lot nearer to the lock where we had to start and yes, we didn’t have to get up so early to get there for 8-30am, which as it turned out was just as well!
When we got to the Boat and Horses it quickly became apparent there wasn’t a mooring ring or bollard in sight and the edge of the bank was all paving slabs! Unable to turn round and reluctant to go any nearer to Failsworth we decided to pull in to the bank and see what we could do. Well, we would have done if we hadn’t have become well and truly grounded! Barry had to tow us off while Barbara got the pole and tested the depth further up. As it was very much deeper just before the motorway slip road culvert Barry managed to get right in to the bank, we pulled in behind and got the front in but the back was still about 5ft from the bank!
Attention then turned to how to attatch the boats to the bank. We spotted some holes between the paving slabs, evidence that mooring spikes had been put in there before and we soon managed to secure ourselves, after a fashion. At least there was no boat traffic to pull the spikes out, there was only one other boat about all day!
Later in the afternoon a group of youths appeared under the culvert and Barbara got the dogs out of the boat just for show as Mac usually barks when they let him out! These youths went away some time later and were replaced by a group of younger ones smoking something distinctly illegal! In fact Barry, who was fishing at the front of his boat, got a bit high himself!
All was quiet after they went, there wasn’t even any noise from the pub which was just up the steps from where we were moored. Until that is, 2-40am when there was a loud knocking on the side of our boat. I strained my ears but could hear nothing further so I got up and looked out of the bedroom blind and saw a young chap staggering along the towpath away from us, like he was drunk, then he fell in the hedge! I watched him laying there for a few minutes then went back to bed. A little while later I heard footsteps coming back and assumed he had got up and was going home. It took me ages to get back to sleep after that though.
Meanwhile, at more or less the same time, Barry and Barbara had an Eastern European girl in their cratch, knocking on their door. Barbara opened the door (she’s a lot braver than me!) and the girl said her boyfriend was frightening her. Barbara told her to wait there while she got her phone to call the police. The girl got off the boat and sat on the grass. When Mac and Kizzy started barking she went away.
We think this was some kind of scam but when it didn’t work the couple went away. So we had a rather disturbed night which we probably wouldn’t have had if we had stayed at Chadderton!
