We had a relaxed start to the day as the lock keepers don't arrive until 9.30 on a Saturday. Once the lock was ready we went up with a lovely little river boat.
Above the lock there were rowers and a boat yard, with some big old boats gently rusting away.
There's a big blue road bridge over the river, which I remember driving over a few times, and a high railway viaduct.
The entrance to Vale Royal lock is rather impressive. Like Hunt's, there are two locks, with the smaller one being used. In this case, it's beyond the big lock.
On the approach to Winsford, there's a very impressive looking salt mile, followed by huge piles of salt. Adrian looked up their website, which explains how they mine the salt.
We'd been hoping to poke our nose into Winsford Flash, just to have a look. But the Vale Royal lock keeper had advised that the salt fair was being held there, and the large number of boats attending would make it extremely difficult to turn to get back out again. So we ended up turning by the Red Lion pub, and returned to the lovely Vale Royal moorings for lunch. The towpath there is quite busy, and more than one dog stuck its head through the side hatch.
After lunch we went back through Vale Royal lock, where they currently have a novel way of opening the bottom gates. The mechanism is away being restored, but the gates are too big to move manually, so they fire up a little generator which operates a logging winch. Both lock keepers there were very friendly and chatty -- unlike the one at Hunt's Lock. Once down that one, we carried on to the service block at Northwich. Adrian walked to the nearby Waitrose while I looked after water, washing machine, and the loo. Just along from there, on the opposite side, is a very smart new Odeon cinema.
It was just a short hop to the moorings at Anderton. We were booked on the lift at 5pm, but knew that the one before was a 3.30 so decided to move over to the holding moorings a bit early. We'd just set off when Kevin and Vicky Blick on Harry appeared, so we returned to where we'd been. We had a look at Harry, which was still being worked on last time we saw it, and Kevin and Vicky came on board for a cup of tea. It was really lovely to see them, if only for under an hour.
At 4.30 we set off for the holding moorings, where a CRT staff member told us we could go straight onto the lift.
We had to wait while the trip boat sorted itself out at the top of the lift, during while time there was a torrential downpour including some hailstones. Finally we were on the move, and passengers on the trip boat seemed very excited to see us as we crossed halfway up.
With it being relatively late by the time we were up the lift, we were a bit worried about finding a mooring. As it turned out, there was one immediately after the lift entrance, so we grabbed it, and the sun has come back out.
12 miles, 4 locks. (258 miles, 137 locks)
1 comment:
We were impressed by that improvised method that those friendly lock keepers were using at Vale Royal — they told us that the damaged mechanism went off in January with a promise that it would be back in a few weeks!
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