Silage Making and New Batteries.

 Monday 26th June 2023 in Middlewich.

We made another early start. After a couple of miles, the canal is joined by a noisy road that stays close right up until we reach Middlewich. On the east side of the road and canal is a series of huge chemical works. 

The west side could hardly be a greater contrast with large open fields as far as the eye could see.

One large John Deere tractor was "rowing up" the cut grass and, soon after, a Claas Forager arrived with another couple of JD tractors and trailers to start loading the grass, presumably to make silage.

M was fascinated by the balletic coordination between the forager and the trailers, which she stood and watched as R took MM through the neighbouring lock. The Claas was filling up the trailers at great speed and the JDs made a convoy of full trailers which passed us on the road as we continued on up the canal.

Not long after, we arrived in Middlewich and moored up just before King's Lock. R walked ahead to King's Lock Chandlery, just the other side of the lock, to see if they could help provide us with a new set of batteries.

Happily they could! So R took MM through King's Lock and moored up on the service bay. The first job was to disconnect all five old batteries and get them out on to the quayside. Then, after cleaning the battery box, it was a question of fitting the five new batteries and connecting everything back up again. Those things are really heavy!

Soon after, MM was the proud possessor of five smart spanking new batteries and everything could be switched back on again. Let's hope these ones also last for at least 10 years! We were amused later to see that R's cargo pants had developed what appeared to be a row of bullet holes over his thigh; it turned out that a little battery acid had spilt on them - good job he hadn't been wearing shorts!

There is a very pretty mooring by a small park just a few hundred yards further on, we moved there and moored up before walking over to Morrisons for a "few bits".

Today: 5 miles, 8 locks and 4.3 hours (inc power).

Trip: 36 miles, 51 locks and 28.0 hours.