Friday 1st July
We have travelled 5 miles and 8 locks today and are now at a place called Paddy’s Wood which is about a mile and a half from Wheelock. The reason we haven’t quite got to Wheelock is because we were warned by boaters coming the other way that the locks were closed and Wheelock was chocker. The locks had to be closed while the canal was dewatered so BW could extract a boat, which had sunk between locks 59 and 60! We did hear it was one of their own boats but don’t know if this is true! Apparently the village moorings were all full of boats waiting to go up.
We decided to stop here at Paddy’s Wood (strange name as there is hardly a tree in sight) and walk in to Wheelock and find out what was happening. Not that we were bothered about continuing, it is a nice mooring here and we had already been running for 4 hours. As it turned out there were numerous places we could have moored up if we had wanted to, although the moorings nearest the locks were full obviously. The locks reopened about 2pm and things started moving again.
While we were in the village we sampled a couple of pubs (surely not), The Cheshire Cheese, where the woman behind the bar was more interested in watching the tennis and talking on the phone than in serving us, and The Commercial Hotel where the chap behind the bar was very amiable. We also called in to the wholesale pet suppliers which is handily placed just across the road from the sanitary station. We will call back there tomorrow when we stop to do the elsan and get some supplies for our four legged friend.
We may just go on to Hassall Green tomorrow which is not very far, only a couple of miles and 10 locks before tackling the rest of the journey in to Kidsgrove on Sunday. We are then going up the Maccie again.
