Total Distance: 17.3 Miles, with 30 locks en route.
Journey Time: 14h:28m - Approximately 1.8 days of cruising,
including lock operating time (assuming 8 hours of travel per day).
Total Distance: 17.3 Miles, with 30 locks en route.
Journey Time: 14h:28m - Approximately 1.8 days of cruising,
including lock operating time (assuming 8 hours of travel per day).
The theme for today its all a bit marti pello, wet wet wet.
Nice early start, phil got going while everyone else slept, after about an hour we stopped again so the now drowned phil could make a coffee and warm up while we slept.
Stopped of for a quick pint, well to let us all dry off a bit and let the lunch finish cooking, then on again, did pretty well and realised we were about a day ahead of ourselves meaning we could tootle down the shropshire towards chester on the thursday.
moored up at the top of middlewich locks in pretty much darkness.
Went the chippy for tea and watched 24hr party people.
Kays birthday, and a lot nicer than wednesday.
trundled off in a chester direction thinking that the Shady oak might be a good place for tea tonight after all its a birthday.
We got to the oak about 2ish and decided really it was a bit early and we should carry on, somehow about 6 hours later we found ourselves mooring outside Telfords Warehouse, (Phils regular place of employment.) where we amused the Doorman by asking if it was alright to leave our boat there.
Northgate Staircase has to be the worst set of locks we've encountered on our travels, big heavy and about 10 mins to fill each lock.
Ended up having tea at Cafe uno then returned to Telfords for a pint or 2 before retiring to the boat for champagne.
Early start tomorrow.....
Phils up first attempting to turn the boat around so we can get going back up northgate staircase, all the crew have been told up early so we get going, Ste soon joins the turning mission as does mr schoey.
Into the first lock, Phil and Schoey as normal on lock duty, Ste driving (sideways,) Kay sleeping off her hangover and Mark well good question where is Mark.
Mr Blackman appears as we make it into the last lock of the set asking about water for a shower, we explain that we have none and it will have to wait besides 12 locks till the water point we'll onlyh get hot and sweaty doing these.
Well on with the locks same sketch as before Kay still asleep and mark now chatting on the phone to Chris Oakley (who's on air at Dee.)
carried on cruising till we really could see nothing due to the dark, realising we were in the middle of butt fuck nowhere and that we were meant to be getting a visit from James Piekos(another of these radio types from hallam fm. )
bit of tea few beers then bed not knowing how we'll make it back tomorrow.
Blackers and Ste drew the short straw and the 6am start althouh due to fog I'm pretty certain we didnt move till 8ish, anyway this meant that pete and phil got a well deseved lie in.
Ste carried on with helm duties (igoring request to slow down for a sharp bend and tunnel entrance meaning we met the side of the tunnel and not the entrance.) whilst we cleaned and polished NB Mimi after all she had served us well.
We made it back to black Prince 45 mins late with 3 smashed wine glasses, all in all not bad considering we had managed to do in theory 2 holiday routes in 1 week.