Saturday 1st October

The time came to leave Middlewich, Millie and I had been very happy there but were looking forward to moving on. We went through Big Lock and down to the water point to fill up – I’d worked hard to conserve with water and had managed nicely. The canal became interesting – overgrown in places and big wide areas (flashes) in others. The wide areas are formed by subsidence due to salt mining. In one of the flashes there used to be a number of submerged wrecks of abandoned narrowboats. In the 1950s British Waterways scuttled a number of surplus narrowboats in various place throughout the system. In recent years all the wrecks have been raised and taken off for restoration, as the guide book says, one generation’s cast-offs become the next’s prized possessions! We went under Hell’s Kitchen and Murder Bridges (!) then pulled over for lunch at Whatcroft flash and, as it was so lovely we never moved on :-) The only neighbours we had were Mr. & Mrs. Swan with their four children Down, Upping, Lake and Flanders (you have to be of a certain age to understand the last one!) who lived on the tow path. During the afternoon a father and his 12 year old son (well approximately 12) came past the boat on their bikes. The father inched his way past the family but the son was having none of it. It didn’t matter how much encouragement the father gave his offspring he was not going to go past. So Lady Mary H to the rescue!! I went up with some bread and encouraged the m other into the water b ut the father wasn’t going to get wet so I enticed him away from the edge of the canal and into the hedge so the young boy could get past. Up to this point I thought what a wimp the boy was but to tell the truth I was scared stiff – that swan was huge out of the water!!! Millie just loved the spot and was out and about all afternoon coming back every now and again just to make sure we hadn’t left without her :-)