Up early and a 2 mile brisk walk up the Rochdale Nine ( and yes, they were all full and overflowing for those of you familiar)

– funny, I was doing this healthy walk at 7am and there were some people just on their way home from a night out. Drizzle again, but when I got back to the boats lots of life, as kayakers sorted out their gear and Justin’s Mum who is now just ‘Mum’ to us all was already at the cooker making copious amounts of bacon buttys.

Then, lots of people came down to see us off, including surgeons from Hope Hospital in Manchester (see the gutless kayaking web site for all the hospital details and what they do and why they are relevant etc) – lots of pictures and farewells and then the peace and quite of the canal.

The four guys, Mitch ( flew in from Australia for a week to support Justin), Skibum ( yes, that’s right) another Aussie but domiciled here, Will ( Justin’s godson) and, of course, Justin were making a steady 3 mph and they would to do for the next 5 hours!

Trevor Roberts, Chair of the Community Boats Association came over from Bradford to crew the other support boat and craftily got ‘Mum’ to stay on his boat ensuring he was mothered all the way with tea and cake!

So off we went and sure enough 90 minutes later we were passing Sale Cruising Club, where people were waiting as promised to let me use the Elsan disposal and who informed us that they had chatted to Lymm Cruising Club who were happy to moor at their HQ for the night. By the time we got there our kayakers had managed nearly 14 miles and the welcome we received could not have been warmer – several of the committee including the Commodore came down to see us and not only did we moor but the Club opened up their excellent washing and shower facilities too. That night some well scrubbed kayakers and support crew and family all wandered into Lymm for a good Chinese nosh.