Flying Meat Pies.

0 Locks, 5½ Miles. Now moored at Heath Charnock.

The plan for the day was a quiet easy cruise with a stop off in Adlington to check out the White Bear Marina’s Chandlery. It was while we were moored up on the EMPTY permanent moorings outside some expensive looking houses that we came under attack from a flying meat pie. Where we had moored the house owner had cleared all the Elderberry bushes along the towpath so he had a clear view of the canal and we wondered if he objected to us mooring there. The street was a cul-de-sac so it’s not as if lot of people would walk that way. He did make an appearance by climbing the boundary fence but when he saw me he dithered around among the cut down branches and then retreated from where he had come. Strange!

Anyway we got some of what we wanted from White Bear and then cruised on to our present location. Our course we had to visit Frederick’s Ice Cream Parlour which is only about 200 yards from the canal. This ice cream factory/shop was set up by Italian ice cream makers in 1892 and is still a family run business. They are open 9am – 9pm during the summer and boast 100 different flavours.

Frederick's famous ice cream parlour, Heath Charnock. It's open 9am - 9pm during the summer.

The road outside the shop had about 8 cars parked on both sides of the road and all the occupants of these vehicles had obviously been into the parlour as they were all happily licking away on their ice creams. This shop is so busy that they had 4 assistants behind the counter and the queue to the door never diminished while we were there which was for over half an hour.  As we have collected some blackberries over the last couple of days, for dessert tonight it was apple and blackberry crumble and ice cream.  Mmmm absolutely delicious, might have to get some more before we leave tomorrow.

1775 locks, 3659  miles, 66 tunnels, 83 swing bridges and 53 lift bridges since Nov 2006