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Sunday 7 May 2017

Malkins Bank Sunday 7 May 2017

Well bit of a strange thing happened last night while we were moored in Kidsgrove. We wandered down to The Red Bull pub about 7pm and had a nice meal and a pint. The pub was only about 300 yards from where we moored, on the way we passed a gentlemen who had had , shall we say, enough to drink who asked if we had seen his waterproof over trousers as we walked down the towpath, unfortunately we hadn't. We left the pub about 9pm and wandered back to the boat, there on a stone seat by the towpath were the over trousers. When we got back to the boat Diana said there is a beer bottle missing, she had laid 2 empty beer bottles and an empty wine bottle under the seat on the front deck.

When I got up this morning, there standing on the front deck was the missing beer bottle. So who had taken it, why and why did they bring it back again? who knows, O and the trousers were still on the seat when we passed this morning.

We left a bit earlier today at 9-20am as we knew some of the lock ahead would be with us and we wanted to be in front of anyone coming through the tunnel as it could well be more than one boat.

Red Bull Lock was against us but other than that I think we only turned one all day. We met a flurry of boats first thing and then after Lawton Top Lock nothing until after we had moored up at Malkins Bank.

I quite looking at the structure of things as we travel around and these lock steps caught my eye with the hole in each end so they could be lifted by tongs.DSCF7763

The canal use to swing out to the north just below Halls Lock, this is fairly obvious by the shape of the offside bank.DSCF7765

It came in again at the winding hole between Lawton Bottom Lock and Snape's Aqueduct, looking from these two points its easy to see where the old line would have gone.DSCF7770

We stopped for lunch at Hassall Green but had to push on again as the batteries were still not fully charged, We had been moored at Kidsgrove for 2 night without running the engine, the batteries were still fine this morning but of course took longer to charge than normal.

If you ever travel along the M6 motorway crossing the canal at Hassall Green you will be aware of the bridge repairs and speed limits. It looks as if they are reinforcing the foundations of the bridge supports with the whole lot being supported on this platform at the moment.DSCF7776

We carried on to moor for the night just below Saw pit Lock number 64 rather than continue into Wheelock for the night and tied up about 3pm.

Todays weather has been wonderful, I have even had to break the shorts out.

Today’s Journeyimage6 Miles, 23Locks in 5 hours

Something New: if you click the map it should take you to Motion X website and an enlargeable map of our trip

2 comments:

David Mack said...

Clicking on the map just takes me to a blank world map on the MotionX website.

Brian and Diana on NB Harnser said...

Thanks David, I don't know if anyone else has tried it. It obviously worked for me, but its my map of course.