River Weaver

The locks on the River Weaver are enormous. You can't use them on your own but the lock keepers were all really helpful and friendly-they even phoned through to the next lock so it would be empty and waiting for us when we arrived.

 

 

 

 

I don't know if I'd fancy climbing out of the lock using these...

That's a big windlass to turn!

We went past what seemed like a junk yard for boats and old fire engines..

 

Talk about a tight squeeze...we only just got under this bridge.

Tata own a lot of the land both sides of the River Weaver. This is where all the salt comes from for our roads in winter.

At the Red Lion in Winsford we had to turn round and start to head back towards the boat lift. Our lift back up was at 4.15 in the afternoon and we needed to be there half an hour before.

The bridge had subsided one side and they'd had to build it back up.

As we came up the boat lift the heavens opened again. Greg was trying to worry the bridge operator by asking if it had ever been struck by lightning....the guy in the boat next to us started laughing.......and put his umbrella away quick!

This morning we set off fairly early as it wasn't raining (for a change). W e went past Lion Salt Works which is now a visitors centre.

Another enormous factory belonging to Tata- Greg nearly got knocked off the roof 3 times in his excitement at taking photo's.

This looked like an interesting pub....

This poor fella had a big job on his hands.

This was a 'graveyard' for old working boats just after the war when the government had a surplus of working boats. A lot of them have been lifted out and restored now.

Croxton Aquaduct.

I haven't seen any kingfishers for ages.

And then the trouble started......

The people in the hire boat were in such a hurry to get into the pub that they left the gates open and moored up on the lock moorings.

When we got to the next lock there was a queue of 4 boats.....apparently there was a loony woman in the second lock up that had tied her rope to the middle of the ladder...and then opened the paddles. She then had to sit on top of the boat with a pair of scissors trying to cut the rope.

It took us an hour to get through the bottom lock and just as it was our turn next a plastic boat came down..as she came into the lock she grabbed hold of my hand and asked me to hold onto her until her husband came back with the rope as she was nervous because they'd only had the boat for 2 weeks. We slowly lowered her down(as the loony one arrived at the lock) As she tried to come out of the lock she got jammed solid as her fenders were to big....we pushed and pulled and eventually Greg came up and also grabbed a rope and with all of us pulling she finally popped out of the lock like a cork, got caught up in the overflow from the lock, went round in circles twice (at one point I thought she was coming back into the lock) tried to mow down 4 children who were fishing and came to rest alongside our boat. Greg quickly tied her up as the loony woman was asking if she could come on our boat to retrieve her rope from the ladder. Greg very nicely said he'd get it for her(for which she didn't look overly grateful) and went into the lock. It didn't end there ....as we were going up in the next lock a French woman and her children were trying to open the gate to come down-when the lock was just starting to fill. After lots of ooohs and aaahhhhs and puzzled looks she left the lock( and her husband who by this time was stuck up the corner unable to move) and Greg was able to come out.

Luckily most of the boats were going up the Shropshire Union towards Wales so we carried on the rest of our journey relatively peacefully past another Tata salt factory!

Who knows what will happen tomorrow......we have 24 locks and a tunnel- It could be a long day.

Happy days.