Tuesday 14^th  September 2010

Weather – mixed, few showers

The target today was to get part way up Heartbreak Hill the other side of Wheelock, meaning a

few locks towards the end of the day. But perhaps more significant the first taste of locks of any matter since they guys left Manchester 3 days ago. Idea is that they use locks when single and isolated but any close sets they get out of the water and wheel them round. So the Big Lock at Middlewich was the last time we saw them all day! A busy day in Middlewich for boaters and so slow up through the five locks BUT a bonus at the top (Kings). Bearing in mind there are two narrow-boats with Peter and Rick running the Community boat and Elysium of course, a lot of juggling was going on and as we came up through Kings at 1pm the smell of Fish and Chips from the Chippy just across the road was just to much and so we despatched Gabrielle, Justin’s mum who has been riding with us, over the busy road to buy bags of excellent chips! She says there was twice as many as she would expect “dahn sarf” – she doesn’t speak like that – a very refined lady in fact – who then copied the boys in making her first ever chip butty!

Not Long afterwards we had a call from Justin to say that they had arrived at Wheelock and decided tat this would be where they stopped – off to the pub they went! We arrived some 90 minutes later and I didn’t like to try and get them back in the kayaks, even though I was worried about schedule. Wheelock has just about the biggest BW shower room on the whole system and so for the first time everyone was able to properly scrub up and young Will at last got his hair washed – it had been stressing him for days!

Carpo put his foot down and told them it was an 8am leave to get back on schedule – chickens firmly brought home to roost the next day!