Tuesday 28th September
Today we have had a marathon trip! 13 miles to Ellesmere (not to be confused with Ellesmere Port on the Chester Canal) taking about 5 hours, which is a long time for us, just actual cruising with no lock hold ups or anything. There were a few lift bridges but apart from that just plain sailing (groan!)
We did end up in a bit of a convoy as there were 2 boats following us at the first lift bridge so we ended up at the back obviously. We were then following 2 hire boats – Anglo Welsh and one from Preston Brook, the name of the company escapes me at the moment but the boat was called Cheshire Cat. They both went off at water skiing speed and we couldn’t keep up with them. Ordinarily we wouldn’t worry about this but they would be operating the next lift bridge and we didn’t want to hold them up waiting for us to get there. As luck would have it they did get held up, by a Viking Afloat so we caught up before the bridge.
With the lift bridges out of the way we were free to go our own pace but we did catch sight of Cheshire Cat again as they got grounded twice when passing oncoming boats. The second time it happened the poor woman fell in while trying to push the front of the boat off the bank!
We all finally made it to Ellesmere by mid afternoon. Ken and I went off to the handily placed, canalside Tesco’s for a few bits and pieces (we will stock up properly tomorrow) and happened upon the cratch cover mender we had missed at Norbury Junction so we are getting (another) new zip put in our cratch cover tomorrow. Unfortunately it is supposed to rain all day tomorrow so it’s not a good day to have the cover off!
On the way back we saw Jim and Sheena (Arlanza) again and had another chat.
So we will be here tomorrow getting our cratch cover mended and doing chores in the rain.
