Friday, January 29, 2010

A cold trip back to Anderton.

Tescoman arrived as arranged at The Olde No 3 around lunchtime on Wednesday. It took an hour or so to get everything sorted out and stowed, and by then the day had gone badly downhill. From a bright if cold start, it had turned wet and windy.
Like I’ve already said, the mooring here can be noisy, so we decided to brave the elements and head towards Lymm. I say “we”; Mags and Meg spent the trip inside while muggins hung grimly to the tiller, sheets of horizontal rain sweeping across the roof.
At least with the Trad stern I was sheltered from the waist down, but this is one of those occasions where one of those “wigwams for wimps” (Sue from No Problem’s term, not mine!) would have been a blessing.

We made a stop at Outrington for a gas bottle and a couple of bags of solid fuel, then moored about a mile out of Lymm. There are good moorings in the town, but we prefer not to spend the night in built up areas if possible.

After being rocked to sleep, we woke up yesterday to a still, grey morning. But the wind got up again a bit, and stayed behind us all the way to Moore.
We made a stop on route at Thorn Marine in Stockton Heath for a replacement battery. We’d been running out of juice by morning last week, so I did a check on each of the batteries in turn and found one with a dead cell. All of the others would be trying unsuccessfully to bring this one up to their level, flattening themselves in the process. So I’d disconnected the culprit from the bank, and the 3 remaining had been working fine for a few days. We’ve room for 4, and it gives you that bit more power, so it needed replacing. Loads of volts again, now.

We stopped overnight at Moore, near the handy PO/General Store, listening to the rain on the roof.

The weather had dried up by this morning, but the wind had freshened from the NW, cold and biting.
So it was under blue skies, but chased by the nagging wind, that we came back onto the Trent and Mersey and down to Anderton.

It was a pretty quiet trip, with just one noteworthy incident. Alas, I’d left my camera on the table inside. We came upon an angler on a bend, and, being polite I slowed down to tickover. It was as we approached that a roach took his bait, so I knocked the transmission out of gear to allow him to land his prize. Then the rod bent over alarmingly and he was obviously struggling as he tried to get his landing net under the struggling fish. What he’d got finally was a 2’ long pike, which had grabbed the roach as it was reeled in. Unfortunately the net wasn’t man enough and the fish slipped back into the canal, leaving the poor chewed roach on the hook. The fisherman said he’d fished there many times and not had that happen before. The incident would have made a superb set of photos. Damn.

We got to Anderton at around 14:30, and will maybe stay here for the weekend. Then south and west, heading for the Shroppie for a bit.

I met Bill off NB Anguilla, another Orchard boat, while I was out with Meg this evening. He’s moored around the corner near Uplands, this being his first opportunity to get out of the marina since the big freeze.

Boaters on the K&A are ticked off at BW's attempts to enforce Continuous Cruising rules. CC's (like us) who have no home mooring must not stay in one locality for more than 14 days, and "must be engaged in a genuine progressive journey (a cruise) around the network" quote from MOORING GUIDANCE FOR CONTINUOUS CRUISERS.

The Kennet and Avon Boating Community Website was set up to fight BW's right to enforce these guidelines against boaters who breach them. Interesting stuff... have a look.

Locks 1, miles 18

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