Friday 9th July
I’m back! The banal nature of what we have been up to (basically shopping at Morrison’s, Boot’s, B and Q, Pets at Home etc. Going in to Hanley to the fishing tackle shop. And (of course) going to the pub while we were at Festival Park) and having no internet signal for the last 2 nights at Kent Green means I haven’t updated lately.
Anyway, we left Festival Park, after a good shopping spree, on Wednesday morning to go through the Harecastle tunnel again (we are dab hands at it now) and started up the Macclesfield again. It started raining just before we went in to the tunnel and continued (not inside the tunnel obviously!) for much of the rest of the day. Our plans to moor up at Kidsgrove were thwarted by – a) the shallowness of the water and b) by a group of 4 boats travelling together who nabbed the rest of the moorings while we were trying, unsuccessfully, to get in the first one! Undaunted but getting very wet we decided to carry on to Kent Green where we had moored last time we came up here. To get there we had to go through the stop lock at Hall Green. Here there was a queue of 3 boats and a BW man trying to let some water down the lock from above to fill the canal as it was so low. All this took quite some time and we got wetter and wetter and wetter.
When we got to Kent Green I got confused as to where we had moored up last time we were there and we got grounded trying to get in to what turned out to be the wrong place anyway. I was on the bank with the rope and Ken couldn’t get the back in. He said for me to get back on but by that time I couldn’t get the front in near enough either! I had to jump quite a gap to get back on in the end!
When we reached the moorings we wanted to get into there was the usual scenario – one narrowboat at the end and a yoghurt pot right in the middle, taking up the whole of the rest of the space! We managed to squeeze just on the end, a bit near the bridge maybe but we were soaked and fed up by that time so it had to do! To add insult to injury the pub shut at 2pm and it was now 2-30pm so we had a cup of tea – yes really!
Thursday we stayed at Kent Green basically because we couldn’t be bothered to go anywhere else. We got up late, moved back on to the proper mooring rings, the yoghurt pot having departed, then walked to the shop for a paper. I cleaned the cratch out and did a bit of general cleaning then we took George to the pub. You could actually see The Rising Sun from where we were moored up but he didn’t know that so we went up the towpath and down a farm track so he got a bit of a toddle, bless.
Today we have moved on to Congleton and are on the embankment again. We may move on to Bosley tomorrow.
