Wednesday 22nd September
We are now at Coole Pilate, 2 miles outside Audlem, heading for the Llangollen. We have just had a couple of days with Peter and Tim. They arrived lunchtime on Monday so we took them and George to the Shroppie Fly of course. They were staying in different B and B’s, Peter at Little Heath Farm in the village and Tim at Coole Hall Farm, just outside it. Monday evening we went to the Shroppie Fly again for dinner. There was a sort of folk music jamming session on later which we were not particularly enamoured with but at least it wasn’t very loud!
Tuesday we went for a trip to the Hack Green Secret Nuclear Bunker, which was fascinating. We watched the documentary film called ‘The War Game’ which shows what they think it would be like if there was a nuclear bomb dropped here. This film was banned by the BBC for a long time because it was too scary. I have to say I found it unnerving even without the imminent threat of nuclear war.
After the visit to the bunker we had a spot of lunch on the canal bank as it was a lovely day. To get back to Audlem we had to go down Hack Green locks where there is a winding hole, turn round and come back up the locks. While we were having our lunch a few boats passed us going to the locks and a queue started to form so we thought we’d better get in it. We joined the queue at 2-10pm and came out of the top lock on the way back at 4-10pm! 2 hours to do 4 locks and about half a mile! Still, that’s boating!
That evening we went to The Bridge because we had seen their pie night advertised. The steak pie was gorgeous!
Today we did a bit of shopping, took George to the Shroppie Fly then moved up to Coole Pilate. When we got here we started chopping up the gang plank for kindling. Our gang plank was so heavy neither of us could lift it so it was pretty useless. We bought an aluminium one at the IWA show last year (although we usually use George’s dog one!) so the original one was also surplus to requirements. We came up with the idea of using it for kindling ages ago but never got round to cutting it up.
Tomorrow we are going back to Nantwich.
