Better Late than Never

We are now cruising we should have been cruising 9 weeks ago when the culvert collapsed and stopped navigation.  Better late than never.  The change of scenery above and below Macclesfield is quite dramatic, We’re no longer in the Peak District, and we do miss the hills, but the view is made a lot better with the promise of 4 days of sunshine on the forecast.

Looking back towards Sutton, south Macclesfield

Although looking forward, those clouds ahead seemed a bit heavy

just above the Bosely flight

And sure enough 2 minutes after we’d moored up, the heavens opened

And we woke to the warning red sky in the morning and a heavy frost.

So much for 4 days of good weather

But the sunshine quickly warmed us up and we were ready to go down the Bosley Flight.

A promising start

12 locks over the next mile, not the longest flight but one of the prettiest, and all was going well until we got halfway down. The pound was sadly lacking in an essential element – water. We don’t know if a paddle hadnt been dropped, or it could simply have been a very leaky lock,

We reckoned it would take 3 or 4 locks worth to refill the pound. It took about 20 minutes

We managed to run through enough water to float our boat and I’d gone back to  check all the paddles were down, when I heard an almighty bank on the bridge above me. Two cars had collided, thankfully there weren’t any serious injuries to the drivers, although I’m fairly sure both cars were written off.

Almost there, Lock 11


The rest of our journey down was uneventful, until lock 12 when we got chatting to a family out for a walk, of course we roped them in to work the lock for us and as a reward, we treated our young gongozeler to a ride. (If you’re reading this, thankyou for your help)

Emerging from lock 12 at the bottom.

All done in 2 hours and 5 minutes, roughly 10 minutes a lock

And Eric had his reward, better late than never, boaters breakfast for lunch.

Lots of locks, the Bosley flight

Shortly after leaving Macclesfield we cruised south across Gurnett Aqueduct, looking over you can see the house where James Brindley had served his apprenticeship (and Bryons Lane is a pretty circular walk around to Sutton with a well stocked village shop and tea room worth noting )

Paying Homage to James Brindley

But we weren’t stopping, the clouds were grey and heavy and we wanted to reach the top of the Bosley Flight before they offloaded, which luckily we did, and they did. Thankfully we woke to reasonable sunshine and set off down the flight.

Number 2 of 12

The flight is 12 rural locks, nicely spaced out over a mile, so it usually is a pleasant experience even if it’s hard work. All but the last three were set against us.

10 of 12

And we exited number 12 just 2 hours later.

Made it, 12/12

There’s plenty of mooring at the bottom on the embankment that overlooks the River Dane Valley and the magnificent rail viaduct to the east.

River Dane Valley

And the local lamdmark “The Cloud” to the south, this is the peak that Eric and Tim climbed 2 months ago. I decreed that the Cloud’s cloud would obliterate the view so I would leave it until “next time” before I considered the climb.

The cloudy Cloud

And of course when we woke to a perfect day, we needed to continue cruising.

A cloudless Cloud