Friday 3 October 2008

Black sky overhead.

0 Locks, 8 Miles. Now moored at bridge 176 Trent & Mersey Canal.

Despite the weather forecast and the black clouds all around it was time to move on. We waited until one heavy downpour passed over and then we were away. The funny thing was that as we headed south the weather improved and for quite a while we were cruising in sunshine, weird.  We did eventually have to put up with a couple of light showers but nothing too bad.

Along the way we spotted a cygnet standing on the bank all alone and not looking very happy. Hopefully it was the wet weather getting the better of him and he wasn't sick. There were no other swans around for about 3 miles. Later we picked up a huge length of timber across our bows which must have been about 20ft long  and about 10 x 6 in size. It looked like a piece of an old jetty that had broken away. The only way I could shift it was to go close to one bank and snag the timber in the reeds and spin it round to slide off the bow.

After find a mooring, the sun came out for a while and I took advantage of it and went fishing  which only produced 8 tiddlers. When I spoke to the proprietor of the fishing tackle shop in Northwich yesterday he said that it hadn't been a good season as his sales of bait were down by 1/3rd compared to last year. I know that I had a lot of better catches last season compared to this season.

Since we have battened down the hatches for the night we have had heavy rain and hail so I hope it improves before tomorrow.

1471 locks, 3100½ miles, 51 Tunnels, 42 swing bridges and 39 lift bridges since Nov 2006

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