Thursday 3rd June
We awoke this morning to the smell of burning rubber. Made a change from the sewage works! Investigations revealed there was a fire in the scrap yard. Plumes of black smoke rose into the air and there were a couple of small explosions. Whether the fire was lit on purpose or not was unclear but there seemed to be some tyres burning down there. Anyway this soon cleared and there didn’t seem to be any major incident. Unlike later on when a body was discovered in the T and M!
I went down to the sanitary station at Red Bull, which is just down on the T and M, to do the elsan. On my way back I saw the couple who had been moored up behind us last night going down the lock. The chap said there was a body in the canal. Apparently a lady walking her dog saw what she thought to be a cushion floating in the water, the chap tried to get it out with his boat hook and discovered it was a woman’s body. He buggered off down the lock and the dog walker was phoning the police. I had a small peek on the way past but fortunately only caught a glimpse of the material of her dress. Later the canal was closed for a few hours while they got her out.
As we were on the Macclesfield and rejoined the T and M not in the immediate vicinity of the body we were able to get away. We were first in our convoy of 4 boats into the Harecastle tunnel. We were travelling towards the closed end of the tunnel this time and Ken found it was better not to have the light at the end of the tunnel to concentrate on because you can then concentrate on a point nearer to where you are, if you see what I mean? 40 mins later we were through and moored up for water. During this exercise an Anglo Welsh hire boat with 2 families on also moored for water. George, who was lying on the grass, was once again besieged by a load of children and rolled about on his back shamelessly, the tart!
We travelled a little bit further and moored at Westport lake. It is a really lovely spot here, very popular with boaters, cyclists and walkers. When we arrived at lunchtime there were only a few other boats here but the moorings have totally filled up tonight.
Tomorrow we are staying here and doing a bit of shopping and cleaning. Due to all this nice weather I have another ironing mountain to do as well! Ho hum.
