It's funny how hard it is to 'do' nothing... I'm really bad at it. I've got one of those brains that can't go to sleep unless I've a list in my head of things to do when I wake up. Actually, lately that's not strictly been the case - tbh, I'm still feeling very fatigued following on from the incident. Having done a bit of googling, I've discovered this is totally normal as the brain recovers.
I wish it would hurry up. I've ALWAYS liked a little 'nana-nap' of an afternoon but at the moment, I'm managing LOADS of em. Oh well - luckily we're quiet this year so it doesn't really matter.
Having spent a couple of days moored in Stone, on Sunday morning (after a quick visit to Morrisons so the Bosun could experiment with some sea-food for breakfast)
, we chugged off up through Stone and Meaford Lock-flights and went on as far as Barlaston... or rather Wedgewood. I WAS expecting to lose the bosun to the bathroom ... the last time I tried the things, I spent an hour on the floor trying to vomit up a kidney.
He got away with it!
The weather was glorious - most unusual for a bank holiday weekend and my ginger lallies are finally getting their summer colour... well by colour, I'm meaning that the freckles are joining together nicely. Monday morning was another lovely day and enjoying my morning coffee, (already in the shade of a parasol) it was nice to see the cows coming into the canal for a drink... they ARE stupid creatures though - drinking from one end and emptying from the other at the same time.
I think we chugged off around 8.30 and soon worked our way up to Stoke - on arrival at Etruria Industrial museum, a brief bit of excitement as smoke was coming from the chimney... it's rarely open so we were excited at the possibility of having a nose around... SADLY... they were prepping it for the following weekend Steam rally/historic boaty thing.
Tail between our legs, we ummed and arred a bit as to what to do. Should we continue our plan to get to Middlewich (slowly) or take a diversion up the Caldon Canal? We turned round, moored up and had lunch whilst thinking about it.
It really was one of those yes / no decisions that kept changing with every mouthful.
The outcome (after many changes of minds) was stuff it, lets go. It was only about 2pm anyway so rather than sit in sweltering sun, we may as well create a little breeze and move the boat.
Dob's not overly familiar with Staircase locks yet (only done a few) but I sent him up to work it out for himself . The instructions (which I've never looked at before) are ONLY for going one way ... only CRT could get that wrong. 2 boards, with the same wording.
They should say "whether you are going up hill or down hill, the top lock needs to be full and the bottom lock needs to be empty" .
Oh well... we made our way up and enjoyed the chug through Hanley park in the sun - it's a lovely looking park - especially given where it is. It's a bit of a shame it doesn't feel safe of an evening to moor overnight. I suppose that could be a load of rubbish but I for one, are happy enough to continue on to after Ivy lift bridge before stopping overnight. THAT said, I'll happily moor up for an hour or so to nip into the new Lidl store.
In our case, we went nearly as far as Engine Lock to moor up in the shade for the the remainder of the day.
and even then it took MANY hours for the boat to cool down enough for comfortable sleep.
Thinking about it, this was the first trip up the Caldon in nice weather... every other attempt has usually been wet and miserable. It REALLY is a pleasant canal in the sunshine.
We'd wanted to go down to Froghall (or is it Frogall?) but as per usual, CRT had issued a strange notice about locks being closed between 10am and 2pm Mon to Wed but then changed it to Thursday... knowing our luck, we'd get stuck down there when something broke and the season would be shafted. SO, expecting CRT to bugger things up as usual using our experience from previous stoppages, we took the safer course of action and went up to Leek instead.
STILL very hot, we moored in the shade again and I took a couple of (my now many) afternoon naps .
When I'd woken up, the sun had found it's way back to the boat so we moved along again lol.
I forget which day it was, but by the time we'd finished with the Caldon for this year, we headed back to Etruria. Dob had a couple of errands to run and I nipped to Morrisons for a camembert to bake for supper... check me out... calling tea, 'supper' . I must try and stick to my roots!
Chores complete, we went onto Westport Lake and moored for the night. I didn't bother to make a booking for Harecastle tunnel for the next day - it's all a bit of an un-necessary faff these days... easier just to turn up at the end of an allotted passage window and if they can tag you on, they do... if not, you just wait an hour until the 'open passage' window which runs from 10 until 2 (I think) . As it happened, we got there about 9.15 and the last boat of the 'booked convoy' was just going in so the chap waved us in at the back.
Not the nicest place to be with a couple of hot smelling boats up ahead and once the door closed and tunnel fans came on, my tunnel phobia returned - with extra imagination of being suffocated in a potential tunnel fire.
Glad to be out, we began our descent of the Cheshire locks - more commonly know as 'Heartbreak Hill'.
We'd heard towpath rumours they were already short of water but we found them MUCH better than recent years. STILL knackered and leaky but plenty of water around to make up for it... for now at any rate.
The plan HAD been to take it easy and split them over 2 - possibly 3 days. Problem was, with the weather being so nice again, we felt obliged to continue... so we did. getting stuck behind a couple of oldies making SLOW progress - the latter of which let us go ahead in one of the twin locks and we ended the day down in Middlewich about 8.30pm.
In hindsight, that was too long a days boating for me atm and because of the uncertainty as to whether there'd be space below Kings Lock, we hedged our bets and moored in the first space we could - sadly, next to the noisy road.
We presumed we'd be so tired we'd not notice the road overnight - we were wrong... the night went on forever and we were very relieved to move on the following morning.
Working our way down the Middlewich lock flight, we topped up with water after Anderson Boat yard and then came across 'Big Lock'... I still have no idea WHY it's a double lock on a narrow canal but more worrying was the broken balance beam. Clearly rotten as hell and no doubt CRT will blame it on Vandalism - the reality being that a few blokes from the pub drinking beer simply sat on it during the sun and it snapped.
This made us re-think our plan to nip to Anderton. IF CRT slap a closure notice on it before we get back through, we'd have to re-route our ALREADY re-routed upcoming customers again.
We pretty much abandoned the Anderton plan, chugged to the winding hole and went straight back up the lock. On to the Middlewich branch of the Shroppie to kill some time.
Luckily at the bottom of my mate Dave's back garden was available so we'll spend a couple of days here before chugging on to Calverley ... there's no rubbish disposal in Middlewich and we need bins so a 10 hour round trip coming up in a couple of days... meanwhile, time to begin my new book and have another afternoon snooze in the sunshine.
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