18th June '12

a short day today but done in sunshine!!! Hooray!!!

We have just come a few miles up and moored at Middlewich, since there is a chandlers here and we needed to get a new circuit breaker before the tunnel we will get to either tomorrow or the day after! Hopefully this will get us through without it going out - luckily it's a short tunnel and I suspect we will be able to see the other end but there's a principle at stake here! Just to be on the safe side I made John buy me a HUGE torch so in the worst case scenario I can stand at the front and shine it.

There was a boat festival here over the weekend apparently which we avoided because we didn't expect to get a mooring, but apparenly it was very quiet because of the weather and we could have come here. Oh well you live and learn.

We have just treated ourselves to fish and chips for lunch - not quite Sunnyhill portions (Tom etc will know what I mean) but still very generous and I couldn't eat all my chips. We actually ate outside which was lovely - we haven't had our chairs out on the tow-path for such a long time I can't acually remember the occasion!

We have got a really busy road next to us but the neighbours are friendly and it's so nice to be warm that we have decided to stay here for the night and just relax a bit. John has fitted the new circuit breaker and is currently attaching new fenders to the boat as ours have taken a bit of a battering. Plus one of them was actually found by John wrapped around our propeller last year so it didn't owe us anything.

I've draped washing around the boat and am all set to get the knitting out and sit outside and enjoy the sun.

Somewhat industrial approach to Middlewich which belies the town itself.

this is the view from our hatch taken looking down towards Kings Lock, which is where the Shropshire re-joins the Trent and Mersey. Should be interesting as there's the lock, the junction and another lock within 100yds of canal. Looking forward to that tomorrow morning.

by the way is anyone actually reading this? I've had no comments so far and wonder if it's entirely for my own benefit (I'll still do it by the way - but am just interested).