In the true spirit of Britishness, the weather continues to dominate our cruising plans, yet no matter how carefully we study various forecasts nothing beats looking out the portholes for accuracy. The bad days have been so awful we’ve battoned down the hatches and stayed snug inside. With no photos to prove it, yet the good days have seen blue skies and dramatic clouds that have done nothing but enhance our love of this out door lifestyle.
We were to spend the next week travelling down the 10 miles of the Middlewich branch,
Autumn hadn’t quite arrived when we were here mid October, and the garden at Minshall Lock still held some jewels.
Stanthorne Visitor Moorings were a nice place to stay for a few days
And our local family came to say hello
5 minutes after they’d left the view changed dramatically and the heavens opened
Whilst we were moored at Stanthorne we were puzzled by what looked like a stationary boat approaching the bridge. Curiosity got the better of us, two boats had had their mooring pins torn out and were floating free in the middle of the channel. We were able to do our good deed for the day by asking a passing boater to nudge them close enough to the bank for us to get on, and rescue the ropes which thankfully still had the pins attached. The ground is so soft with all the rain it’s hardly surprising the pins didn’t hold.
The moral of this has to be. If you can’t moor on rings or armco, use a cross pin to brace the rope holding pin, use a springing line to help hold the boat still, and always thread your rope through the pin ring and most importantly SLOW DOWN past moored boats, infact throttle down before you reach the moored boat so that you are actually going slowly when you pass them. Apologies for getting on my high horse there, but it really does matter.
And back onto the Trent and Mersy at King’s Lock Middlewich
