A day out in the car and then Bosley locks

Monday 25th June

Today, we decided on a VERY late start. The weather forecast was ‘scorchio’ and we wanted to visit Jodrell Bank so what better than to visit it on a school day, weekday? It was well worth the visit and we learnt lots. As well as the ‘science bit’ there is a lovely wood and garden area, plenty of room for kids to run and picnic.

Scorchio was right, so once we had finished there, we did a ‘postman pat’ tour around the area – best we could find was a half timbered village church, unusual and very picturesque (what no picture? – Ed).  There are a lot of lovely halls hereabouts. This hall and that hall, even the gatehouses look tres’ posh!

A late lunch and then back to Bosley top lock. At 10am this morning lock rage was breaking out as we went to the car. A volunteer lockie (VL) was filling the top lock to let a waiting boat descend. Mr Rage stomped up from below the lock and demanded that he needed water letting down now!! Lockie said water would be let down when the boat had descended. That was not good enough for Mr Rage-going-puce. There were boats stranded on the bottom, no one afloat, water, now! Lockie was polite, Mr Angry was not.

I realised that he had his boat against the bottom gates in the low water pound below, he hadn’t bothered to check what was happening at the lock and expected to go in first. I went up to the VL and quietly explained what Mr Numpty hadn’t mentioned so they turned the lock to let him in before passing the waiting boat down through.

Come 6:30pm, when we had decided that it was cool enough to do the 12 lock flight as the sun went down, we were not surprised to end up aground in the top lock pound due to low water levels, not least because I had to move over to give a deeper draught boat half a chance of reaching the lock.

We took 95 minutes to complete the flight with most of the locks being in our favour due to the ascending deep draughted boat. We tied up on the mooring below the bottom lockon the towpath in the cool and watched the moon rise – again!

Brenda