Spring Adventure Week 6

Parbold to Overwater Marina

I am very excited to say that my daughter, Elizabeth, has taught me how to add a map to this blog, so at the end of this you will find a map that shows our route over the past 6 weeks and each of the places we have stayed at.  Clicking on each of the place markers will give you the date we visited and a photo.

Monday 11th April - quite a windy day so we set off unsure how far we would get.  

We followed the Pride of Parbold through the locks until they stopped for lunch.

We got to the first of the locks outside Wigan and couldn't get any further as the whole mechanism was locked with a padlock.  A phone call to CaRT established that they were padlocking this lock from 8pm to 8am and as it was 1pm they had to admit they had forgotten to unlock it!!  An hour later the padlock was undone and we were able to carry on.

We continued on through Wigan and turned right towards Dover Bridge where we moored for the night much later than we usually do!

Tuesday 12th April - today we had a leisurely start and cruised as far as Worsley.  We stopped for some shopping at Leigh and diesel at the Bridgewater Marina.

It was a beautiful day and as you can see from the reflection in the canal absolutely still.  Wonderful cruising!

Wednesday 13th April - carried on today to Lymm.  Another beautiful day for cruising.  We crossed the Barton Swing Bridge and looked down on the Manchester Ship Canal where we could see the road bridge, rail bridge and the canal bridge we were on!

Turned right at Waters Meeting towards Preston Brook, we had come from Manchester which was to the left, and carried on towards Sale where we decided to moor up at Waterside Square and do some shopping.

When we got back to the boat there was a notice attached to the boat from the Bridgewater Canal Enforcement Team.  It suggested we had broken some rules and if we didn't contact them as soon as possible we would be liable to have our boat removed and sold or scrapped!!  We were extremely worried and phoned as soon as we could and ended up paying £40 for a licence because we had returned to the Bridgewater Canal within 28 days.  As it stands we are still in discussions with Bridgewater Canal Enforcement Team about this.

One of the many herons we have seen during this trip.

We eventually arrived at Lymm and moored up for the night, I think this was one of the worst days cruising in the whole of our adventures so far!!

Thursday 14th April - today was a complete change from yesterday, cold and grey!!  We cruised down to the Preston Brook tunnel passing Claymore Canal Holidays on the way.

The very first boat we hired came from here, nb Ruby Tuesday, and we also hired nb Bridgewater Hall from them as well just before we bought shares in nb Minuet.

Once through Preston Brook Tunnel we moored up for the night at Bridge 211.  Here we left Toby on the boat and walked down to Davenport's Tea Room where we had the most amazing afternoon tea!!

We were so full afterwards, we didn't eat again until the next day!!   We did take Toby through the fields and down to the River Weaver, to walk off the extra calories!!

Friday 15th April - a fascinating cruise today, we went through two more bridges and then stopped to look at the Anderton Boat Lift.

The Anderton Boat Lift allows boats to pass from the canal to the River Weaver without using a series of locks.  It is an amazing structure but unfortunately we didn't use it this time, but we will in the future.

We also visited the museum at the Lion Salt Works near Northwich.  It was the last open pan salt works in the country and stopped working in 1986 and is now preserved as a museum.

We finally moored up in Middlewich just before the rain started in earnest and stayed on board in the dry!!

Saturday 16th April -  from Middlewich we turned right onto the Middlewich Branch and cruised along my most favourite of canals until we got to Barbridge where we turned left onto the Shropshire Union Canal.  We moored up outside the Olde Barbridge Inn and had our supper there too!!

Sunday 17th April - the last day of our trip.  We had a very pleasant cruise past the Hurleston Junction with the Llangollen Canal and on towards Overwater Marina.  Weather was very good to us and Dave turned Ella into the entrance of the Marina and into our pontoon with no problems at all!!

Six weeks aboard Ella, and a wonderful city break in Liverpool, an amazing trip!!!