Saturday 28th August
Having travelled 7 and a half miles today (no locks) we are now at Christleton, which is near Chester. After a sunny start, which soon disappeared, it has been cold, wet and windy today, yuk! I have had to light the fire again. We have decided we have somehow entered a time warp and it is actually October already!
We took George to the Cheshire Cat at lunchtime but he was unimpressed with the size of the covered smoking area. It was a bit small and with the 2 tables and 3 chairs in there there was very little dry floor space for him. In the end, when we had finished the crisps, he played up to go back to the boat. That was ok because Ken and I then got to go in the pub where it was dry and warm!
After the pub we went to the shop in the village. The couple who run it told us they had a narrowboat. Nothing unusual about that you may think but theirs turned out to be too wide for the narrow locks! The normal width of a narrowboat is 6’10”, theirs is 6’8” at the back and 7’1” at the front. They didn’t notice until they tried to go down Hurleston locks, on the Langollen and couldn’t get the boat in the lock! They are understandably pretty fed up about it. The problems we have had with our boat pale into insignificance when compared to something like that!
Tomorrow we are off to Chester.
