Red Bull (half way to Aylesbury)

Karen went for a run on Monday morning whilst I set off to start the ascent of the 26 lock Cheshire Flight.  Fifty years after the Trent & Mersey was completed, the flight had become a bottleneck so duplicate locks were added in 1830.  For some reason, that I cannot ascertain, locks 55 & 56 in the middle of the flight weren’t duplicated. Six of the duplicates are now closed or filled in following subsidence from brine pumping or coal mining and one following a road widening scheme.

Leaving Paddys Wood on Monday morning

We’re going out with Dave & Barbara to a pub at the top of the flight on Tuesday evening, so we only needed to go half way up on Monday. Buddy and I did the first six locks on our own and then Karen joined us for the rest when she got back.

The bottom two pairs of locks

I’m still trying not to use my right hand following my fall on the Wigan flight; the thumb and wrist are still quite swollen and painful.  This means I find it a little cumbersome climbing up the lock ladders.  Also, winding paddles up with my left hand, makes me realise how much stronger my right arm is.

Funnily enough, when we approached locks 55 & 56 (the ones that weren’t duplicated) we both noticed that they were centrally placed in the canal.  It was strange that we had never noticed this before.  A couple of locks further on, the right hand one was closed for maintenance.  That's a beauty of duplicated locks in that a lock can be closed for maintenance without having to close the flight to traffic.

They’re aren’t many places on the system where these signs could be used

Workmen were in the closed lock injecting foam into cracks in the lock sides.

Floating platform for the workers

We assume they will clear up the excess foam

I was glad the workmen were there as I got caught by the wind on the way out of the lock and was finding it difficult to get away from the side.  Karen was setting the next lock and the workmen saw me pulling the boat off the bank with the centre line so came to give some additional weight 😊

At one lock Karen came across a package with a pair of spectacles in it.  They had been found by the lock and some kind soul had put them in a plastic bag with a note and tied it to the balance beam.

  

When we stopped for the day Karen posted in the Friendly Narrowboat Forum (one of the narrowboat forums that I must admit I left) about the missing glasses.  She received a personal message later from the wife of the guy who lost them so hopefully they will be reunited (spectacles not the couple 😉).

We were soon going under the M6 at the southern end of the 20-mile roadworks stretch that seems to have been there for years.  For once the traffic was flowing nicely.

Passing under the M6

There were about a dozen horses in a field next to the M6 and several of them were playing.  It was really sweet watching them run around in circles and then every so often stop and start pawing the air in the way dogs do.

Buddy checking the boat was coming into one of the locks (the lock behind him is one of the filled in ones)

We just got through the last lock when we felt the first spots of rain, but we managed to get moored up before it started raining hard.

Monday night’s mooring at Hassall Green

With a sunny day forecast for Tuesday we set off for Red Bull around 10 o’clock.  Unlike Monday, when all the locks were set against us, nearly all the 13 locks we went up were set for us.

Leaving Hassall Green on Tuesday morning

At one of the locks a large, very friendly, whippet/small greyhound took up with us and wouldn’t leave us or Buddy alone.  It had no tag on it so we had no idea where it came from.  It followed us for about ½ mile and then turned off at a bridge and I must admit that it did look like it knew where it was going.

Arriving at the first lock of the day

As we climbed the flight Mow Cop became clearer in the distance; a hill that straddles the Cheshire-Staffordshire border.  We have walked up it a couple of times when cruising the Macclesfield canal which runs close to it as it heads north from the Trent & Mersey at Kidsgrove.

Mow Cop in the distance

We stopped at Red Bull services to get rid of rubbish and recycling and to top up with water.  We stayed there whilst we had lunch and then carried on for the last two locks of the day and moored just above the aqueduct that carries the Macclesfield canal over the Trent & Mersey canal.

Moored up for the day on Tuesday at Red Bull just above the Macclesfield canal aqueduct

Later on we walked over to the Red Bull pub and had a few drinks and a good meal with Dave (Karen’s cousin) and Barbara.  Regular readers will know that they were in the docks at Liverpool and were due out on the day after the Melling breach happened whereas we were due in the same day.  As luck would have it we were caught just on the east side of the breach and were able to turn around.  Dave & Barbara loved it so much that they stayed in the docks for the entire summer while the breach was repaired.

It’s now two weeks since we left Skipton and have travelled 132 miles through 93 locks.  We are nearly half way to Aylesbury and have been through half the locks and still have 18 days left to get there by the beginning of December.  That’s when the lock before the basin at Aylesbury closes for winter maintenance, so we have to get through it by then.