We made it back onto the Macclesfield Canal and even got our favourite mooring on the embankment that overlooks the Dane in Shaw Valley.
Passing through Hall Green Stop Lock, at the start of the Maccy, always gives us a feeling of arriving home, well, technically it is as we were both born within a 1/4 mile of this canal! No more locks for us until the Bosley Flight and we don’t plan to go up there for a while due to the hassle of getting to hospital appointments. As we’re not going to be moving any great distances for the next few months, this breaks the “Continuous Cruisers” rule that is a condition of our boating licence with Canal & River Trust (CRT). You can claim mitigating circumstances, so I’ve contacted CRT to explain the situation and to ask them to allow us some latitude in our length of stay in this area. They were very helpful after my knee replacement in 2022, so I’m hoping they will be again.
The shoulder reconstruction surgery went ahead as planned, so now I’m a one-armed bandit. No, he didn’t amputate!! It’s just how it feels having my right arm strapped up in a sling all the time! Ian’s been a very busy bee. The boat is looking very tidy with newly painted gunnels and he’s currently doing the welldeck. Passers-by, both walkers and boaters have all suggested he’s doing the painting equivalent of a rain dance, and to be honest, despite the dry forecast on one day, that’s exactly what happened- it poured down just after he’d started!
The water from our reconditioned water tank is still bit wiffy, so he’s fitted a filtering system to mitigate this. That proved to be a bit of a nightmare as, despite trying different connectors and the trusty PTFE tape, various joints kept taking it in turns to leak. But, after three days of battle, swapping the position of the filters and switching to thread seal, Ian won! It’s something we probably should have done years ago.
You’d think that being moored up would be uneventful, but we forgot to factor in the nearby marina with its fleet of hire boats. At the weekend, Ian literally had to jump ship to help a crew discover how to take a runaway dayboat out of neutral so that they could steer it. And yesterday, we were rammed. The noise was horrendous, and it rocked the boat so badly that our stuff went flying off the shelves inside! Having started out as hire boaters, we totally understand that there is a learning curve to steering these beauties, but an apology is always appreciated! We did politely suggest to the helmsman that next time he could at least try to use reverse to stop the boat from crashing!
Weather permitting, Ian has also been taking the opportunity to do regular walks up Bosley Cloud with the dog. The views across the Cheshire Plain are quite stunning. Whilst I’m feeling physically restrained, my mind isn’t, so plans are afoot for the next few month’s travels, both near and far. I always love having something to look forward to and the calendar is now bursting with scribbled plots and plans!
