16 Miles, 9 Locks, 1 Lift Bridge – for this week
Totals: 395 Miles, 392 Locks, 10 Tunnels, 1 Lift Bridge, 9 Swing Bridges
We had imagined a quiet week this past week, even though we had some plans, but in essence revolved around spending a bit of time in Nantwich, a day in Manchester and the start of the Llangollen canal.
Well that was the plan, and it started off very well with the cruise from Calvely to Nantwich; found a lovely mooring on the embankment within a very short walk of the services and around a bit from the boat yard.
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| on the approach to Nantwich lookout for the wooden horse - made from old lock gates |
Popped over to the chandlery to pick up a few bits and pieces as they become needed along the way, and also to see if there was a TV repair shop in town.
We had had some problems getting the TV working – not just properly – but at all. It seems that when I was doing a wee bit of tidying up behind it to sort out the cords and clean up a bit, I must have forgotten exactly how these cords all connected back together between all of the bits of kit that we had – oh, as well as this we also had found out that someone fancied our satellite dish and nicked off with it – this was before we had arrived back.
So with the address of the TV shop (Nantwich TV Centre – Welsh Row) we walked off into town – about a kilometre in all but it was not all that hard – found the shop, spoke with the guy and arranged a time for him to come out. We continued on into town found an Aldi and completed the first half of the list that she had – couldn’t complete the second part as we would not have been able to get it all back – even with the trolley.
Whilst I was busy working a couple stopped on the towpath outside the boat – the towpath is a pebbelcrete path – no signs of any dirt/mud with grass on either side – a real pleasure to see. Anyway, the gentleman spoke through the window after he had recognised the boat and asked if we were the Aussies with the blog.
Dashing outside, we met Heather and Roger – a couple of Aussies from just a few miles from us in Melbourne – well a good 50-60kms at Warrandyte. They have a part share in a boat over here – Celtic Kiwi – and are here for the same time each year.
A pleasure to make your acquaintance and look forward to seeing you both again.
We repeated the shopping trip the following day – this time to Morrisons.
I have to say that Nantwich is a very pretty town – a lovely town square and church.
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| as pretty a town square as you are ever likely to see |
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| the church in the square, dating from the 13th C - the lampost is early 20th |
Our TV guy arrived at the appointed time – he had severe doubts about my change of career to a TV service person – I think that I managed to get the power plugs into the correct sockets but not much else.
Anyway within a few minutes he had everything working just a treat and explained to us how to set it up properly – we now have the opinion that with all of the digital/freeview channels and given that we don’t want to watch a great deal of TV that we can just make do with this and not have to worry about satellite.
He could have struggled a bit – but he just made it look too damn easy – the male ego took another battering.
Not long after he had left we then set off for a day trip to Manchester – this being 4th May. Off to the bus stop for the No 84 into Crewe, friendly bus driver dropped us off as close to the train station as he could – short kilometre walk to the station; then only a few minutes wait for the train into Manchester Piccadilly – out into Manchetser to do some shopping and off to Old Trafford and with over 74500 others we were there to see United win it 4-1 over Schalke 04 (6-1 on aggregate) and into the Champions League final.
We reversed the travelling and got back to the boat at about 1am – a very long day.
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| Thumper on the lookout for that extra ticket - he eventually gets in via Diane's handbag |
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| ....and the teams come out - this was the closest it was all night |
Friday came and we were off from the moorings and heading towards Wales – firstly through the Hurlstone Locks (fenders up please) – the Lockie told us it was a very quiet morning – we were the fourth boat through for the whole morning – we cruised up and moored overnight at Ravensmoor – a walk through the fields only to find the pub was not open (12 to 3pm and 6:30 to 11pm) – 5pm would not do it !
On Saturday we cruised a bit further along to moor at Wenbury – complete with two pubs – both open all day; a small co-op/post office – stocked well enough.
We visited both pubs to decide on the which one we would patronise for Sunday lunch – The Cotton Arms won out as did we with a very full lunch – well cooked and overflowing on the plates; fire crackling in the background made for a very pleasant lunchtime – Diane made use of the wifi to chat to her sister Vivienne back in Sydney.
Rain came and went over the weekend in varying degrees of volume and the temperatures which had been quite warm a week ago have dissipated to low teens.
Lastly we “listened” to the United v Chelsea game on Sunday afternoon – again United came out winners – the perfect end to a very busy / very quiet week; had to watch Match of the Day on BBC2 to catch up on the match itself – the Champions have triumphed again – just 3 matches to go – Blackburn, Blackpool and Barcelona.
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