TRIP REPORTS

AUTUMN CRUISING 2007

Part 1 - not very far really

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We lay over at Marple for a few days.

Wendy felt that her medication was making enough difference that she didn’t need to go back to the surgery, which later proved to be a mistake. 11:53 was a later start than we wanted, mainly because I was catching upon sleep. We set off just before Joan and Michael on Water Rat. They were winding too, but not aiming for as far as we were. At the junction we winded - not very easily because of the wind.

At the top of Bosley locks there is only one boat’s length which is neither a long-term mooring nor the water-point, so we moored at 19:10 on an empty long-term mooring, hoping its owners wouldn’t come back, which they didn’t.

While we were waiting for Tilly to come back, the boat between us and the water point moved off, so we moved into its place and took on water. We also used the rubbish disposal point. Tilly stayed out until 16:00, which only left us time to do the flight, setting off at 16:16 and arriving at the foot of the flight at 18:42. There we found plenty of visitor mooring space available and only one other boat there.

Tilly stayed out again, so I went for a walk to try to get a photo of the Dane Aqueduct from down by the river. I was only partially successful as the only footpaths I could find were on the side of the river where the aqueduct was heavily shrouded in trees. I could see what looked like a good vantage point on the other side, but could find no way of getting to it.

Eventually Tilly came back and we were off at 15:07 in very windy conditions. On the way we crossed paths with our London friends Ben & Judy Scott, just a week into their 7-week “sabbatical” cruise to mark Judy’s retirement, so we stopped and chatted with them for a while. We stopped by Congleton station station at 17:13, as I needed to go to London again next day.

Perversely, because we weren’t planning to cruise on Monday, Tilly came back for breakfast at about 08:00. I headed for London about mid-day (so as to be able to use a Cheap Day return). On my way to London, the train was delayed by a signalling problem. On the way back, all trains out of Euston going beyond Watford were running about half an hour late (some of them more) because of an earlier problem with a dead cow on the line. The result was that I missed my connection at Stoke-on-Trent and used a minicab rather than wait and hour and a half for the next one. While he was away, Wendy went into the town for some shopping and lunched in the local Weatherspoon’s.

On Tuesday Wendy was feeling pretty groggy again, so we found her another surgery, where she was prescribed some different antibiotics and told to rest for a few days. But she had an appointment at Moorfields about her eyes, which she didn’t want to miss, so decided to take some her rest on the train. She left around lunchtime on Wednesday, to stay in the flat overnight before a Thursday morning appointment. We’ve now got permission from BW to stay on these 48-hour moorings for a week if we need to.

To be continued when we start moving again.