We were pretty chuffed with ourselves after Day 2.
We were definitely into the rhythm of driving, navigating, working the locks, and alternating roles. We’re a great crew, and it was a timely reminder of why we love spending time together on the canals.
It was my turn to drive, and with lots of help from John, I managed ok.
Whilst John was supervising me on my ‘L’ plates, Jen and Grahame were making a cracking ground crew, knocking over the locks in rapid succession. All 22 of them!
It was amazing to be in the middle of rolling green hills and paddocks of sheep one minute, then have the roar of trucks on the M6 the next.
The Wheelock valley rolled away as we continued to descend the locks into Middlewich. The last of the Autumn colours were evident as we passed an alpaca or two and some interesting signs and canal boat decorations.
It was solid work all the way to Middlewich. This was where there was a glitch in our plans. We’d hoped to turn left here and head for Wales. The lock gate at Middlewich that was causing grief was expected to be repaired by this afternoon, but alas, when we went to inspect it, we found this!
We weren’t going anywhere near Wales anytime soon!
The blokes working on the lock gate were pretty nonchalant about when the canal might be navigable. “Maybe Wednesday.”
Of course, we weren’t the only ones in this predicament! The Middlewich Junction was beginning to resemble Pitt St on a Friday afternoon, with us and quite a few others trying to figure out what to do and which way to go next. It looked like a ‘Plan B’ was needed!
We decided to hold up in Middlewich for the night and discuss our options. But to get to our moorings for the night, we had to negotiate 3 locks in very close succession, with not a lot of wriggle room, along with 4 other boats going down and 3 coming the opposite way.
Would you believe this whole manoeuvre took us 2 hours!!! (But please note that the pink mugs indicate pubs nearby, so not all is lost)!
It is canal etiquette that if you see a boat coming to a lock in the other direction and the water level in the lock favours that boat, you wait and give way to them. This is primarily not to waste water. Unfortunately for us, being last in the queue meant we had to fill, empty, fill empty the 3 locks several times. And none of the Poms in the boats we had to give way to seemed at all grateful that Jen and I were helping!
Being the efficient lock workers we are our aim was to get through as fast as possible, we were a well oiled machine!
But apparently others like to take it easy, have an extended chat, and only raise the lock paddle half way instead of full throttle like us! We were admonished! Yes!
Unbelievable!
By the time we finally made it to the bottom of the 3rd lock, we were very thirsty!
We found a mooring, tied up and headed to The Big Lock pub. Decision time!
It was a roll of the dice.
We either lollygag around Middlewich, hoping the lock gate would be fixed asap, or head down towards the Anderton lift, which we’d done previously in 2019.
Anderton Lift it was!
Kanga And Wombats Adventures 