A lazy few days, what locks there are are operated by CRT staff. We spent day 39 on the moorings at Northwich and did a bit of shopping, Waitrose just opposite mooring, oh joy (J such a food snob) really heavy load as we stocked up; wheelie bag, two backpacks and two partially filled “bag for life” bags. We found a fishmonger so had cockles and brown shrimp for lunch, ate out at nearest Indian restaurant, pretty good and reasonable.

Slow start to day 40 as locks don’t start until 0900 and we are moored only about ten minutes away. Lock staff really friendly at both locks (Hunts and Vale Royal). We pretty much had the navigation to ourselves only seeing one other narrowboat and a stand up paddle board. Went up to the end of the navigation and onto Winsford Bottom Flash (yes it is really called that!), managed to wind (turn around) there although it is notoriously shallow and it was difficult to get any solid information about how suitable it was for a boat our size. It was really a fish eating bird day we saw cormorants, grebes and kingfisher; although we also saw a swan family with nine cygnets. Trip involved going under very low bridge.

Went back down to the moorings just below the Anderton lift and made a trip to the visitor centre.

We started day 40 late, not only because the locks were not operating until 0930 but also because it was drizzling and we hoped it would clear; by 1100 it was apparent that it wasn’t going to get any better so we set off for the first of two locks. When we went upstream the lock keepers used the smaller of the two available locks; going downstream they used the larger of the two locks – enormous!

We told the lock keeper at the first lock (Saltisford) that we were going to stop for lunch before going onto the next lock, he said this was good as they were expecting a large steam tug (The Danny) which does trips to be coming up. After lunch we went on having not seen any other boat let alone a steam tug; when we got to the next lock we were told the tug wouldn’t be appearing as they had problems getting up from the Manchester Ship canal, basically they had hit the lock so hard that they had broken it. We went on down to Frodsham cut turned around an moored at “Devils garden” where initially the only company we had were a herd of heifers.

Day 41 dawned really bright, had to dodge some rowers leaving our mooring. Once we reached the first lock the story we heard about the tug yesterday was confirmed and it was mentioned that this has now closed one of the routes (brave people) were using to get around the breach at Middlewich. Headed back to Anderton for our return trip up the lift, stopping briefly to pick some elderflowers which were steeped overnight to start making some elderflower cordial. Three working boats moored next to us at the embarkation mooring, once at the top we moored and had necessary ice-creams whilst watching a cute fest of swan family of nine cygnets and mallard family of eight ducklings.