Thursday 4th October

What a wonderful sunny and warm day!  We were just in t-shirts most the day.  We were very short of water so had to make either Hardern Boats or the services at Calveley.

We soon had a wonderful view of Beeston Castle but unfortunately I couldn’t seem to get a good photo of it as the sun was so bright and low.  I was making soup when the gas ran out so we had to pull over to change the cylinder - I thought Richard was going to fall in as leant into the gas locker as he had his arms on the boat and his feet on the bank and the boat was moving out but all was OK!  We pulled over at the Shady Oak near Brassey Green and even though I had made soup we went and had lunch – I had a lovely omelette.

We moved up to Hardern Boats where we got diesel and gas as well as water along with a long chat with the owner J

Just passed the boatyard is Beeston Iron Lock.  This was built by Thomas Telford and made of cast iron plates joined diagonally to overcome the problem of unstable sand below.  However there is a sign up which says “This lock is distorted.  Due to its unique construction there are potential snagging points on the iron work.”  You are also told to only let one boat use the lock at a time which was a shame as there was a hire boat behind us.  We pulled over just above the lock for the night and were plagued by the Cheshire lack of mobile phone and broadband signals – there will be more of this I fear!