Return to Wrenbury.

10 locks, 7 Miles, 1 Lift bridge. Now moored at Wrenbury.

It was time to move before we got hemmed in by all the boats expected for this week-ends Whitchurch festival. We had thoroughly explored the old canal route and what is planned for the re-development of the canal to a new basin just short of the original. The land is sitting there awaiting redevelopment so I guess its just a case of when the money rolls in and they can get things moving.

Just before 8am we slipped our moorings as we knew it was going to be a long slow day. As you cannot turn right out of the Whitchurch it meant a short journey back up stream to bridge 31a to the winding hole before heading towards Wrenbury. The Grindley Brook staircase locks were our first delay as the lock keeper already had boats in the system heading up stream. Once through these we struck it lucky with more boats travelling in the opposite direction which left the locks set in our favour so we didn't have too many more delays.

The weather for today was supposed to be fine but the sun didn't manage to break through the cloud cover until mid afternoon. Still I suppose we should be grateful for just a couple of hours sunshine. After mooring up by the Dusty Miller pub we had a late lunch and about 4pm we thought that it was time to get out and stretch our legs. We didn't get far when we got a phone call from the Tesco delivery man. He wasn't due until between 5pm and 7pm but he apologised profusely that he was running early and would it be convenient to accept our delivery in 10 minutes time. Naturally we told him that would be fine and headed back to the boat to await his arrival. This was a turn up for the books as they normally arrive within the last 15 minutes of the delivery slot. After stowing the groceries we again went off for a short walk.

Now something I forgot to mention in the last blog was that we passed a Valley Cruiser hire boat proudly displaying a NZ flag. In the brief conversation as we passed each other ( sorry guys we didn't get your names) it transpired that the crew were from Auckland who are hiring the boat for 6 weeks, and have been following our blog for sometime. Do I take it that our blog has been instrumental in more Kiwi's experiencing life on the "Cut", are we leading Kiwi's astray somewhere along the way, I wonder?

1450 locks, 3018 miles, 51 Tunnels, 42 swing bridges and 37 lift bridges since Nov 2006