Wednesday 8th May

The summer cruising has now started. We got back to Mary H yesterday afternoon and, after a trip to Sainsburys for me and some jobs for Richard, we left Swanley Marina and turned right up the Llangollen Canal. I did the canal with Penny and Jim (my sister and brother-in-law) in 2008 and Richard did it with his late wife about ten years ago but this time we are doing it together – with Muffin of course!

At the first lock Muffin was really naughty and I was convinced he was going to jump into the bywash!  He was so excited and wouldn’t come when he was called and just ran riot!  The second lock wasn’t much better and I was really worried that he was going to be a real pest this trip.

We went a short way up the canal until we came across The Cat’s Whiskers with Julie and Jeff.  Julie and I are Twitter friends and through .  We moored up in front and had a lovely evening with them – sitting on towpath drinking wine until quite late!  Richard then took Muffin for a walk, in the dark, and I did get a bit worried that one of them had fallen in!

Sunset with reflections of cows

This morning Muffin woke up just after 6am and needed to go out for a pee, he then went back to bed and I woke up at 8.15am and he was still asleep – note to self, late night walks are good!

We said goodbye to Julie and Jeff – I’m sure we will see them again on the Llangollen and maybe have another nice evening with them.

We are going straight up to Llangollen as we are meeting Penny and Jim there on Sunday.  They will then be spending a week with us.

Cowslips

Muffin was much better behaved today and he and I walked to do the three Baddiley locks.  We were soon at Wrenbury Mill where I had my first electric bridge of the year – ah the power of stopping the traffic!  From there on it was a series of locks, some of which Muffin and I walked between and even Richard did one of them! 

Grindley Brook hadn’t changed and we were filmed by some chap who actually asked permission to do so.  As we approached the staircase locks I went to report in to the lock keeper who told us to come up after the boat in the locks came down.  Another boat, a hire boat, arrived at the top and the people were very put out that we were going before them. They refused to help me until the lock keeper, who had been fishing a badger out of the water, suggested to them that if they helped they would get down quicker!  In the end they were quite chatty!

Richard and Muffin relaxing at Grindley Brook
while I do all the work!

We carried on to Whitchurch and moored up just before the Whitchurch Arm for the night.  I was pretty knackered and any thoughts of chicken risotto went out of the window and it was egg and chips!

I was quite surprised at the amount of traffic on the Llangollen for May, I guess that about 50% are hire boats quite a few of which are foreign hirers.

11.37 miles

15 locks
2 lift/swing bridges