Wednesday 14th July
Another showery day today and very blustery too. As it was fine this morning we hightailed it out of Gurnett making for, firstly, Macclesfield to get water. You may remember me moaning about the terrible moorings in Macclesfield before and the fact that the only one worth getting in to is the water point. Well, when we got there there was a boat moored either side of the first water point leaving not a big enough gap for us to get in! So we went under Buxton Rd bridge and used the other one. This was easier said than done because we couldn’t get anywhere near the bank! The sloping sides do not help along with the shallowness of the water. Good job George didn’t decide he wanted to get off. Anyway, after some titting about with the gang plank I managed to get water while Ken snuck off to the shop for a paper.
Watering complete we continued to Fourlane Ends, renewing our acquaintence with the Jedward ducks on the way! Mooring at Fourlane Ends was somewhat hampered by two things. a) the appearance of 2 apparently unaccompanied dogs who were trying to take a great interest in George and b) the usual shallow water experience. We finally managed to get near enough to the bank and moored up. We needed a short gang plank to get George off and went off to the Miners Arm’s …………………… Well, we got there but it started raining as soon as we did! The Miner’s Arms is a foodie pub and dogs are not allowed in. Ken went in search of a covered smoking area where we could sit outside but to no avail (the smokers must get wet there) so we had to go back to the boat. George was very disgruntled by this and had to be dragged! We ran the gauntlet of the 2 dogs again and decided we didn’t want to stay there if these dogs were going to be around all the time so we moved off to Higher Poynton where we also knew we could take George in the pub if it was still raining.
On the way to Higher Poynton it stopped raining – bonus. And we found several spaces on the moorings as well – double bonus! George got his trip to the Boar’s Head so he was happy (so were we). In the afternoon Ken put his cray fish traps out as he thought there may be a chance of catching some here. Then there was a knock on the hatch and it was Penny again. We knew she was coming up the Maccie but thought, as we were then going up the Caldon again, that she might be gone by the time we got up here. The space behind us wasn’t big enough for her boat but we had some room in front as well so we moved back so she could get in. When we moved Ken got his trap up, it had only been in for 30 minutes and there were 5 crayfish in it already!
We sat around chatting with Penny and later on having a drink (as you do) until about 7pm then we went in for dinner. Good job we went in when we did as it absolutely chucked it down with rain for a couple of hours after that with thunder and lightning as well. More like October than July, which seems to be phrase of the week !
