Up the Anderton Lift!

Wednesday 21st August, 2013 at The Anderton Lift.
We had first breakfast on MM and promised the boys a second "Hobbit" breakfast in the cafe at the top of the Anderton Lift. While we were waiting to go, Alex found a good tree to climb.

We had told the boys that if they fell in to the canal, the first thing they should do was to stand up as it would only come up to Alex's neck. The Weaver is a big river and they wanted to know if it was deeper than the canals. R demonstrated that, if he was standing on the river bed, he could just about reach the surface with his outstretched fingers. Not a lot of good as he cannot breath through his fingers!!

We had booked our passage up for 11:30 and were moored up at the holding moorings by 11:00.

We went up right on time alongside a lovely old working boat.  It  was such a smooth ascent that M, who was inside the boat, didn't even realise that we had started to go up! From down below, it looks a very long way up.

Half way up... we met the other caisson coming down - with the trip boat full of visitors, waving  happily.

The cafe in the Visitor's Centre was very busy, due to a large coach party of old codgers obviously having refreshments before going down in the trip boat, so the service was a bit slow. We were still there when Sara arrived to collect Jamie and Alex. We all had a look around the museum and the gift shop, then walked back to MM to pack up the boys' things. We waved them off at about 2:30 and subsequently heard that they had an easy journey back to the Isle of Wight.

Apparently both boys said that they had a great time and want to come again next year, which is great.
After that, we didn't move from the visitors' moorings at the top of the Lift. We had a quiet afternoon and evening, and a delicious supper of free range bantam eggs kindly provided by Sara.
Today: 1 mile, 1 Lift and 2.6 hours.
Trip: 283 miles, 217 locks and 232.0 hours.