21 June

We started out at 9AM and turned right towards Middlewich to the Barbridge marina. Unfortunately they didn't have a sewage pump out facility, so we had to go another mile and one lock further to the Venetian Marina. It sounds simple, but in getting there we had to wait for two other boats to go through the lock and once we were cleaned out, then we had to wait for four boats to go in front of us. In all that was over an hour and a half, just waiting for locks.

The boat smells sweeter with a clean out and more pink stuff to kill the odours.

We learned that the next lock towards Middlewich is a horror in that there is always traffic banked up on either side of it, so when we come back this way in a few days time, we will make sure we leave early in the morning.

It was past midday by the time we go back onto the canal to Chester, a mere half mile north of where we had started out.

The weather was a typical English summer's day, without the rain. Wind, lots of cloud, some sun and the temperature bouncing from about 13 – 18C, without allowing for the wind chill. It was a case of coats on, coats off again.

The canal to Chester is nowhere as busy as any of the others we have been on. The locks are 14 feet wide and are twice the width of any other lock that we have been through. The only disadvantage of the wide locks is that they take twice as much water to fill and therefore take longer. We came across our first flight of locks. Instead of having two close locks with four gates, they merge them so that there are only three gates, with the middle gate acting as the out gate of one lock and the in gate of the second lock.

We finished the day off with a great meal at the Shady Oak pub. Jim had to really watch his head as the floor changed levels and there were plenty of low beams. Just outside the pub was a hump bridge across the canal and someone has recently hit it.

A former lock keeper's cottage

We don't know what the little house was for, but this one has slipped as the ground has subsided.
The boards make up the emergency stop lock and are dropped into position by two men.

They have a rabbit problem here

The plants have taken over the deck

These wide locks are very deep as well as over 15' wide

Some locks have detailed instructions

Advertising for the old Shropshire Union Railways and Canal company

These guys are into solar power.  It's a pity that there's not much sun about

We haven't seen that many thatched houses on this trip

This is a railway station

An old fortress, see from the Beeston lock

A more modern castle seen from the Beeston lock

The Shady Oak pub

The bridge outside the pub has taken a hammering.  The vehicle will be a bit sick