Platt Lane to Nantwich
Tuesday 28th May
Well, I don’t know if we’ll get away from Platt Lane this
morning, but it’s not raining at the moment and we don’t have the high winds of
yesterday. We’ll either go on and stop at Whitchurch, or carry on to Grindley
Brook. If we stop at Whitchurch, this will give Wifey the opportunity to give
the other side of the boat a clean. We could also take a walk to the new
Sainsbury’s there, although we’re not desperate for anything that can’t be
purchased at Grindley Brook. It all depends on the weather really.
Well, what a day we had yesterday! We left Platt Lane at
7.45 and, despite the slight drizzle to begin with, we managed the 5 miles, 4
lift bridges and 6 locks at Grindley Brook in just 3 hours. But, once we had
settled in, had a cup of coffee and walked up to the garage for the paper, down
came the rain, and it didn’t stop for the rest of the day and evening.
At the moment, as promised by the forecasters, it is calm
and dry, so we may just get to Wrenbury this morning without getting soaked.
I’ve also had a bit of fun with the laptop this morning.
Firstly I downloaded my emails and found one from Absolute, my email provider,
telling me that my account was 95% full and asking me to empty some messages
from the site. This has happened in the past and I’ve never had a problem
complying with this request. However, when I tried logging on to my account, an
error message came up telling me my login info was incorrect.
Now, I have two logins for Absolute, one of which is for
accessing emails and the other for accessing my account in order to make
alterations. I could not access either of these and have now had to contact
them for a reason and a solution.
When this happened some time ago, Absolute told me that I
should access my account and ensure that, once emails have been downloaded to
my laptop, they are cleared from the site. They also said I should ensure that
all spam and junk mail is automatically deleted on a regular basis. Both of
these suggestions I did actually comply with, but I still have this problem
and, until I can log in to may account, there’s nothing I can do to correct the
situation.
The next problem I had was with Typeitin, my web and email
address programme. As you may recall, I had a problem with the laptop a short
time ago, whereby it insisted on carrying out a check of my hard drive, which
resulted in all the info in Typeitin being lost.
So, over the past couple of weeks I have been re-entering
all that info. Yes, there is quite a lot of it. Anyway, after using the
programme to go to Absolute, up popped a nag screen telling me I had been using
the programme for 16 days and would I please pay for it.
Oh dear, here we go again. This time though I was prepared
because, having run into this before after a crash, I knew where the necessary
info was stored. Voila!, all is back to normal, I think!
Now, we have been travelling for about 4 weeks since filling
up with diesel at Wheaton Aston, where it costs just 79.9p per litre. Having
checked the price along the Llangollen and found it to be £1.04 per litre,
there’s no way we’re filling up along here. Thirty five pence difference! What
a bunch of crooks! So, before we leave this canal I’m going to dip the tank and
see if we can make it back to Wheaton Aston, or at least to Norbury Junction,
where the price is only a couple of pence different.
Thursday 30th May
We moved on yesterday morning and managed to reach Wrenbury
without getting wet.
Another fun day yesterday, this time with my emails. It seems
that my email quota was at 93% and I was in danger of being unable to send and
receive, unless I removed some of the emails sitting on my server at Absolute
Email. So, being the diligent gent that I am, I immediately tried to log in to
my account in order to rectify the situation.
This was when things started to get tricky. I could not log
in using the address and password that I KNEW to be correct. So, having also
tried to log in to my account, which has a different password, and failed in
that attempt too, I then sent a message to Absolute asking what the problem
was.
This morning I received a message from Absolute telling me
that neither of my passwords was correct. Hmmm! Now that is odd, very odd.
Anyway, I then had to change my account password, log in to
my account, change the password for my emails and then, as if that wasn’t
enough, I had to go to Outlook 2010 and change my password there. Whoopee,
everything now appears to be OK.
To add to the misery, we now have rain and sunshine, which
probably means we also have a rainbow somewhere. I think we’ll be staying here
at Wrenbury.
Friday 31st May
The coldest spring in 50 years! No wonder we’re fed up with
the weather.
But, we think we’re in for a bright weekend up here, so
we’re keeping our fingers crossed. We have four miles, five locks and two lift
bridges to get through before we can settle down at Burland for a cup of
coffee. Hopefully Wifey will get up early enough for an early start.
Saturday 1st June
At last, summer is here and the end of spring came with
loads of sunshine. Hopefully we’ll really have some summer this year.
Yesterday we left Wrenbury nice and early at 7.30 and, just
as we were passing through the first lift bridge, we spotted a boat on the
other side turning around to head in the same direction. A couple of hundred
yards ahead is another lift bridge and, rather than have them open it, I
suggested that Wifey do so, thus allowing them through first, since they were
ahead of us anyway.
Having passed through both bridges I then found myself
behind the slowest possible boat on the cut, even their cruising speed was
slower than ours, so I was forced to give them a blast and get them to allow us
to pass. Goodness knows how long our trip to Burland would have been had we
stayed behind them as we also had five locks to contend with. In the event, we
made Burland by 10 am, which is not bad going on a four mile stretch with five
locks.
The remainder of yesterday was fine and sunny, so we
measured up for our back panels. In doing so we soon realised that if we
intended fitting them any time soon, then we would have to clean the back doors
up and replace the hardware. Fortunately we already have new handles, so all we
need to do is sand down the doors and re-varnish them, and replace the shoot
bolt and air vents, all of which we can probably buy at Nantwich chandlery,
which is where we’re heading this morning and it’s looking like another bright
day.
Our first port of call is Nantwich itself, where we’ll pick
up a few bits and pieces and visit a few charity shops. I’m particularly
interested in buying a pack of paint filled brushes from Smiths. This pack
holds 30 ‘brushes’ and cost about £5. I already have a pack of fibre tipped
pens, but they apply too thick a coating of ink. What I’m hoping is that the
brushes will behave like watercolour, only without having to mix colours on a
palette and I won’t know that without buying them. Who knows, this may be an
even better method of painting.
When we return from Nantwich we’ll pop down to the chandlery
for our bits for the doors and then I can get cracking on sanding them down.
It’s gonna be a busy day today.
Sunday 2nd June
Ahhh, Summer is here at last and yesterday proved to be a
very pleasant trip to Nantwich. Unfortunately, just like last year when exiting
the Llangollen canal, we got stuck in one of the locks, this time the bottom of
the four. After Wifey opened the two bottom gates and I started moving forward,
we seemed to jam solid, just stopped dead. At the same time as that happened,
another boater came along from below, hoping to prepare for her boat once we
had gone. The only thing I could think to do in this situation was to have both
women open the top paddles and let some more water through. It took a bit of
high revving of the engine, but eventually our Shiralee popped out.
We know for a fact that the lock keeper at Hurleston has to
open all the paddles early every morning, so as to ensure that there is plenty
of water in the pounds between each lock. The problem seems to rear its ugly
head when several boats go down, without boats coming up to replace them and
replenish the water in the pounds, which results in insufficient water in the
locks and gets worse the lower down a boat goes. Last year it was the 2nd
to last lock that we got stuck in.
Anyway, having finally exited the last lock, off we went to
Nantwich and we were lucky enough to find a mooring space. This is quite a long
stretch of 48 hour moorings and there’s usually plenty of room to spare but,
with this being the last weekend of half term, it was almost full.
After a quick cuppa we took a walk into town for a small
amount of shopping. A small amount! We managed to fill Sheila’s shopping
trolley to the brim. As it happens, we were planning to make the trip again on
Monday morning before we leave, so trundling one trolley back to the boat was
no problem.
Today has dawned bright and sunny again, ideal cruising
weather, but we plan on staying the full 48 hours. We’ll probably walk to the
nearest pub this lunch time, which will add another new one to our list. It’s
already getting pretty warm inside Shiralee and I’ve had to open the hatch to
let some air in. It could turn out to be a rather warm day.
Finally, we think we may have solved the problem of Rusty’s
continuing tummy upsets. We like to keep a stock of treats for her so that she
doesn’t feel left out when we eat. Amongst these treats are small sausages, which
come in a string and which we usually buy from a pet stall in Derby Market.
These sausages have a very thick casing, so it’s difficult
for any of the contents to leak out. However, some time ago I noticed fatty
stuff oozing out and, knowing how fat can congeal and go rancid, we decided to
stop giving them to her. The result, no upsets for over a week now. In future
we’ll buy those that come in a packet, either at Morrison’s or Sainsbury’s.
Take care folks and have a good week.
Dave, Sheila and Rusty.
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