Evening : Chester. We arrived in Chester, moored up and went for a Chinese meal in a quite large and posh restaurant, which we since discovered was called "The Slow Boat". Chris reckons this must have been where she either lost her camera or had it stolen. Either way, we have very few photos of this trip with which to jog our failing alcohol-fuddled memories.
Morning : An early start back from Chester, and another couple of hours of creeping past "Ossie's Boatyard".
Mid Afternoon : Church Minshull. We turned onto The Middlewich branch and stopped at Church Minshull for a quick pint at The Badger Inn. A canalside sign had joyously proclaimed that it would be open all day. It was shut when we got there, much to our annoyance having just walked half a mile in the rain. To make it worse, we could see a nice roaring fire through the window.
Evening : Middlewich. We arrived in Middlewich without having had a successful lunchtime pub-stop. We went to a pub called The Cheshire Cheese where we ate and had to endure another lock in. The landlord told us some horror stories about some of the previous pubs he'd had in his time - including the one where his pub was attacked by armed robbers who shot his dog dead.
Morning : Disaster. The boat broke down leaving Middlewich. "The Middlewich Triangle" had struck again. We called the boatyard out. The engineer found that the breakdown had been caused by a water leak, which had caused the engine to overheat and stop. He fixed the leak, although it did take several hours from the initial phone call. He refilled the engine with water and it started first time. He arranged to meet us at the next lock just to check that all was still well, and asked us to run the engine hard to make sure that it got properly hot. We arrived at the next lock and he checked the engine over and it all seemed fine... but would the breakdown now delay us enough to miss today's passage of Harecastle Tunnel ?
Lunch : None ! Lunch was meant to have been at The Red Bull at Harding's Wood, and then we would then have passed through Harecastle Tunnel in the afternoon. Stan had estimated that with the early start, we should have arrived there by about 14:00. The breakdown delayed us by several hours so we did not have time to stop anywhere else on the way. We pushed on at maximum warp to see if we could reach Harecastle before the last passage of the day at 16:00... could we make it ?
Evening : Harecastle Tunnel. We finally arrived at Harecastle Tunnel at about 16:10 - which was just too late for the last passage that day, so we knew we would be stuck there until the following morning. We left the boat moored on the tunnel approach mooring, and walked to back The Red Bull, where John had what he claims was his best ever pub steak. We left The Red Bull and went to The Harecastle Hotel as it was much nearer to the boat. After several beers here, we had to endure yet another lock-in.
