Yesterday the forecast for heavy rain arriving at 11am was
enough to convince us to stay put, as it happened the rain appeared later but
it did appear and it was quite heavy.
Today’s forecast was for light showers around 11am, but it
rained fairly steadily much earlier, at 9:15 we decided to set off and hope for
the best.
It rained on and off as we negotiated Cheddleton locks
(13-14).
I spotted an angler in the distance and once within a couple
of boat lengths I knocked the throttle back to tick-over as I normally do, on
reaching the chap I said good morning to which he replied I was creating a ‘wake’
and was supposed to slow down, I thought at first it was just banter, I was
going slowly and there was no ‘wake’ to speak of, but he wasn’t joking, I told
him I was at tick over and not creating a ‘wake’ but he insisted I was, when I
asked him to point out the ‘wake’ he
just shook his head and stared at the bank, I have to admit to verbally
questioning his intelligence, clearly a man who thinks canals were created for
anglers and boats should not be moving along past him creating a 12mm ripple in
the water, nowt as queer as folk!
I carried on and set the next lock, Wood’s lock (15), for
Rod and when he arrived he said that another boater had told him the river
section after the next lock was likely to be closed due to high water levels, this surprised me but it
had rained quite heavily. Rod proceeded and when the river came into view he
took the decision to wind (turn around) because he needs to be back at Etruria
by a set day and didn’t wish to be the wrong side of the river in case he
couldn’t get back. On reaching the lock by the winding hole I tied up and
walked past the lock to look under the bridge and found that the marker board was indeed on Red, Green is normal
conditions, Red is do not proceed, so I winded as well and headed back to moor
up behind Rod just before Woods lock. Evidently it is unusual for it to be Red
and just our bad luck/timing that prevents us seeing the last 3½ miles of the
Caldon canal, some other time maybe.
No pictures due to the rain other than mooring ones, the sun
came out for a while after we moored, typical!
Current mooring:
Later on Rod walked back to take a look at the river for
himself and took this picture.
We could have waited to see if the levels dropped but with more rain forecast it was not really an option for this trip.
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