Friday 10th September
As it was raining when we got up, today we have stayed in Middlewich. We made yet another foray into Tesco’s. You have to take advantage of these things while you can. I am amazed we are managing to find places to store everything we keep buying! Underneath the dinette is chocker, as are the cupboards and the back room!
George has been really tired today, bless. He didn’t even want to go to the pub! Ken and I did a recce of the next locks we are going to do including The Big Lock. So called, not because it is deep (5ft) but because it is wide. As luck would have it there is a pub right on The Big Lock called – The Big Lock. By this time it had stopped raining so we took prime gongoozling position on the balcony overlooking the lock. Firstly we had to deal with the wet seats. Having got through several tissues and not made any inroads into the wetness, I decided to take my coat off and sit on that. Stupidly I put it on the wet seat inside downwards, idiot!
While we were sitting there we were royally entertained by a rather aged couple coming up the lock. He was doing the lock and she was driving. The first thing she did, after he had opened both gates for her to go in to the lock, was bump the boat on the tail of the lock then go in diagonally and bump the front in the lock. He was muttering to her to be careful. Then as he started letting the water in to the lock (very slowly it has to be said) the front of the boat drifted sideways and bumped the wall. This very often happens when you are filling a wide lock and you can’t really do anything about it except put a rope round a bollard to hold the boat on one side.
Anyway he started chuntering and gesticulating to her. A passer by stopped for a chat and the woman told them they had just had the boat painted and the husband was worried about the paintwork getting damaged! As the boat continued drifting about and bumping he continued having a go at her and she had a go back. It was hilarious! They were there for about half an hour doing the one lock. We were glad we weren’t following them They moored up just after the lock, he probably wanted to inspect the damage! I hope they aren’t coming up the flight of 3 as we are going down them tomorrow, we could be there all day!
