Saturday 9th October
We had a very eventful morning this morning as we set off from Grindley Brook on our way to Wrenbury. The first thing that happened was, after we had filled up with water, Ken accidentally dropped the hose connector down inside the stand for the tap! There was no way to retrieve it but that’s not a problem we thought, we have a spare – unfortunately neither of us can remember where we put it! We have located a couple of other hose connectors which we are not confident will fit. We’ll find out soon.
There was not a queue for the staircase locks so we quicky descended them and moved on to the next three locks. The boat coming out of the first one had two couples of a certain age and class (a bit posh) on and the woman who was driving was trying to steer, operate the throttle and hold a dog at the same time! She did a wonderful reverse manouvre – straight into the side of the pound while trying to moor up to wait for the staircase locks!
At the second lock we encountered a couple of first time hire boaters (bless) who, just as we emerged from the first lock to go into the second one, which is literally a few yards away, shut the gates, left open for us by the previous boat, and let the water out! She was very apologetic when I arrived at the lock, windlass in hand and boat not far behind. Some boat owners can give you a really hard time for ‘stealing’ their lock. I know because it has happened to me twice and I don’t think I was totally in the wrong either time (especially the second time). I said I wasn’t bothered but pointed out that some people would be.
Round the corner is the last lock of this group and there was another hire boat, with three couples on, coming up. The women were really excited and were mostly rushing about taking photos etc. There was a chap driving, a chap standing in the cratch with a cup of tea and another chap operating the lock. The unsupervised windlass on the winding gear gave me a clue that there should be someone else operating the lock with him but she had obviously deserted her post! Once the boat was in all the women suddenly appeared on the lock. One reclaimed the windlass and promptly let it fall into the lock! Ken had to get his magnet out and recover it for them!
After all this excitement the rest of the, 5 mile 10 lock, journey passed without incident and we eventually moored up about half a mile outside Wrenbury. We walked George up to the Dusty Miller (which I forgot to take a photo of for his review, oops) and spent a happy hour watching the comings and goings at the electric lift bridge.
No one moored near us (something we said?) so we had a peaceful night and no early morning engine revving!
