An Extended Day of Locks.

 Thursday 28th April 2022 in Middlewich.

For the first time on this trip, the sun failed to appear and so it felt colder. M declared that the only part of her that was warm was her head, thanks to a toasty wooly hat lovingly knitted for her by her friend Mel. A tongue in cheek plea to Mel for a matching "Onesie" met with a short response!

We set off early, a good decision as all 16 of today's locks were set in our favour or had a boat coming out towards us.

The soil round here is very rich and makes a fine tilth.

This is underlined by the very rich grass sward in the foreground and the tractor cutting hay in the background. Hay already - in April?!

 The M6 is just a few yards from our first lock of the day! Quite a contrast between life at three miles per hour and the mad rush on the motorway. We know where we would rather be - no contest!

A large pair of ducks seemed to have made their home on this V-shaped section between two duplicated locks. We had some bread but it was a bit dry, so we threw it in the water to soften it.

However, they just looked down at the water in a disdainful fashion and decided it wasn't worth getting their feet wet. They then waddled over to MM and loudly complained about the service!

We remembered this duplicated lock from 2016, when we were last here. The second lock has been made into a waterfall to carry the excess water.

Lock 66, the last on Heartbreak Hill. A very "good road" as every lock was in our favour.

This is Wheelock Lock Cottage. M was fascinated to see the new owner trying to lever a huge cupboard through the tiny back door. M fell into conversation with him (naturally!) and it turned out that he had just bought the lovely cottage as his "forever" home. A very happy man, who turned out to be a collector of John Deere tractors (he has four!) and also owns two narrowboats which he hires out.

23 miles done on the Trent & Mersey Canal and 23 to go!

We decided to press on through the industrial south of Middlewich as the moorings here are not very nice and the canal runs right alongside a very busy, and noisy, road.

We stopped to look at the King's Lock pub as a possible venue for Saturday night's dinner. In 2013 we had a meal there that was probably our worst ever - hilariously awful, in fact! More recently, Canal Boat Magazine readers voted it the best pub on the network. So we thought we should check to see if major improvements had taken place but they clearly had not - we walked in, took one look and walked straight out again!

We decided to moor up on the Middlewich Branch, which is accessed via the Wardle Canal, the shortest canal on the network. It is only about 120ft long!

The moorings here are very quiet. We moored here before in 2016.

 We will stay here tomorrow to await our guests who are arriving on Saturday morning. Plenty of time to relax, shop for a "few bits" and clean MM.

Today: 8 miles. 16 locks and 5.8 hours.

Trip: 29 miles, 47 locks and 19.5 hours.