Saturday 23 March 2019

Manchester to Lymm and friendly locals...

Righty ho - it's now Saturday afternoon and we've just tied up for the day outside the Bridgewater Club in Lymm.

We've spent the last couple of nights moored in Castlefield Basin - apparently ON someone's mooring. Bless, yesterday afternoon, a young woman stopped by with her dog to ask how long we'd  be staying... on HER mooring lol.  There was no obvious sign that it 'belonged' to anyone...a couple of old tyres hanging on ropes I admit but no identifiers...

She was really lovely about it though -saying that she'd just been off to charge her batteries when she came back to see us tied up... so went around the corner to visit her friend... she also said there was no rush to move on.  It transpired during our chat, that HER boat also came from the same place as ours... also as a self fit out .  Ahem, without bragging, ours has been finished for over 18 months... and she's still waiting for a sink!

It was nice chatting though.

LAST night Andy finally broke his "dry January" with half a bottle of wine... he's done so well not drinking and it was nice for us both to be sitting out the back of the boat people watching and sipping a merlot but it was a shame when it began to rain.

We'd imagined a Friday night in Manchester centre would be noisy - turns out it was no worse than the night before ... with the exception of the ruddy geese - heavens they made a lot of noise... at about 3 am, I Was googling "methods to catch and cook Canadian Geese"!

ANYWAY - despite the disturbed night, 7 am I cast off and went to the water point... at least the one that wasn't hidden...  services here are NOT very obvious.  Say what you will about CRT but at LEAST you can generally FIND theirs!



It was quite a fast tap so by 7.30, we were on our way ...

The Bridgewater canal out of Manchester through Salford is... to be kind, a bit grim... to be FRANK, it's bloody awful...  luckily, no locks or swing bridges mean interaction with scrotums is easily avoided...  THAT Said, at half seven in the morning, there aren't many around.



Unfortunately (for me) Andy had been looking on Google Earth again and spotted a shopping park not far from the canal with a 'Home Bargains' - you see, he bought some plastic planters in Huddersfield but didn't buy enough... NOW everywhere we go, we have to go and see if he can get a couple more... AND of course, sods law means, they never have any in stock... true to form, despite having to tie up against a railing, leave the boat in a dodgy area and then walk a bit, we STILL didn't get any.  On the plus side, I did get a nice salad from M & S for lunch.



WE chugged on - passing Manchester United's ground, and on to 'Waters Meeting'



We stopped in at Stretford Marina and topped up with Diesel - we've used 75 litres since Huddersfield...  a fair bit of that will have been on the heating though as we've been a bit lazy with the fire...

 We traveled through Sale (which is nice enough but has WAY too many moored boats to crawl past on tick-over)... we saw the  "ferry" to take cruise club members from one side of the canal to the other in operation...


Altringham was the next stop... IN search of ruddy plant pots again...  once more, tying Ellis up on a railing... but not for too long and there were plenty of "normal" looking folk around at the time.

NO luck again!!!

Still, at least the sun was out which was a good job as it time go down the weed-hatch again... this time, removing some kind of "cord/rope" and more plastic bags...  the tiller was at least MUCH nicer to handle for the remainder of our trip to Lymm.



As we approached the village, we passed by the boat yard we got the boat from - not stopping to say hello because the temperature had dropped a fair bit and we wanted to moor up for the day to get the fire going... 

Here we are, just near the 'Bridgewater Club" and we'll probably move away on Monday morning.  Mindful we need to get to Marple Junction a couple of days before we NEED to if you follow - we really don't want anything to go wrong for what will NOW be the first cruise of our season.



Writing of Cruises, we've had another 3 bookings this last week - 1 of which is another returning guest from last year and we're really pleased about that...

2019 looks like it's going to be a fun-filled cruising season and we're really looking forward to having company with us again.

Until next time...







3 comments:

Brian and Diana on NB Harnser said...

Passed you today but all locked up, we were at Lymm last night and ate at the Chilli Club

Quaysider said...

lol - we'll have been on one of our "plant pot hunts"... STILL no joy!!! - our funds are low so we're eating in... again.

Brian and Diana on NB Harnser said...

I did the same thing, twice in Manchester, mooring on someone else's moorings. If only the Bridgewater company made it clear which were long term moorings, I think now the carpark is visitor and the other side long term, but who knows?
yes you were outside Halfords when we passed, thought you may have been in Dunelm.