Sunday 4th July
Here we are back outside the Toby Cavery at Festival Park. We left Stockton Brook today after spending a couple of days there, sorting out mail and going to The Sportsman basically. The landlady of The Sportsman actually thanked us for coming when we told her yesterday we were off today, bless. And, sadly, we have now left the Caldon after a lovely fortnight’s visit. I’m sure we will return as it is a really beautiful canal.
We were hoping the weather would hold out for our journey today (strong wind and heavy rain forecast) and so far there has only been the wind, making it a bit tricky but not as unpleasant as if it had been raining as well. We have experienced a few hold ups today. Firstly there was an Australian moored up behind us last night and this morning he came over for a chat. He was hilarious as he regaled us with the story of the mouldy scones he bought in one of the bakeries in Whaley Bridge. He took them back but was refused replacements (although they did offer him his money back) so he took them to the council office and told the environmental health officer! Then he went down the street and told everyone he met about them and where he had got them from too!
We finally got underway and were making good progress. I managed to operate the Ivy House liftbridge ok this time! When we got to Planet lock we met a chap who hadn’t got an anti vandal key and was trying to undo the anti vandal locks with a socket from a socket set. Anti vandal locks prevent the paddles being raised by the local hooligans who do it for a laugh to drain the pound. This chap had managed to get one of these locks undone and had filled the lock so he was ready to come out. During a chat he revealed that as well as no anti vandal key he also didn’t have a BW key. A BW key is needed to operate Ivy House liftbridge so he would have been unable to get further than that unless another boat came to use it and let him go as well. As, at that point, he had only seen one other boat apart from us all day and we had only seen two other boats apart from him all day, it was decided he could be in for a very long wait so we sold him one of our spare BW keys for which he was very grateful.
After all that titting about with BW keys we finally got underway again and reached the staircase locks at Etruria to find 1 boat coming up and another 2 boats waiting. The etiquette with staircase locks if there is a queue is 2 boats up and 2 boats down. As the 3 boats were travelling together we let them all go up first before we went down. All of which took the best part of another hour.
We may have stopped at Etruria tonight but it was packed when we got there with nearly all the moorings full and 1 boat on the water point. We stopped for facilities and then moved on to Festival Park. So tonight I am hoping for another carvery and as we haven’t got anything much for dinner until we go to Morrison’s tomorrow, I may be in luck!
