Almost The Longest Day?

 Tuesday 16th June 2026 North of Sandbach.

We made a very early start as there are 29 locks between Kidsgrove and King's Lock. Most of them are paired with two locks side by side although in many cases only one of the pair is working. Major works were being done on one side of one of the first locks that we went through. A C&RT barge was removing the old lock gates.

A large notice announced that the C&RT is replacing the bottom gates and paddle gear, and doing work on the brick walls and ladders.

M photographed the new gates in place but still awaiting their balance beams.

The first five locks were all against us but the next five were either in our favour or there were boats coming the other way. We paused for coffee after three hours, having done 10 locks. We stopped at the Broughton Arms in Rode Heath where we had lunch with our lovely friends Shelley and Harley in July 2024.

When we met Shelley and Harley there in 2024, we were driving up north and knew they were moored at  Rode Heath, so stopped off there and took a photograph from the car park of them in their boat Lazy Bee. Today, we had moored MM in exactly the same place, so M recreated the photograph. We do miss those two special people.

 Some of the pounds are very short so it is a tight fit to get two boats to pass as one goes up and the other goes down.

 

It was good to see that the C&RT is working on some of the paired locks but quite a few of the "pair" have been abandoned completely like this one, or some have even been filled in.

Anyway, we made very good progress and the weather was kind. For much of the morning the sun came out and we took off layer after layer as we got too hot. The countryside hereabouts is truly lovely, much of it is pastureland given over to grazing herds of cows, hence Cheshire's famous cheese!

 Our original idea had been to stop next to Malkin's Bank Golf Club overnight and have breakfast there in the morning but as we plan to meet up with Jenni tomorrow, we needed to get on and so settled for an ice cream and kept on cruising.

Further along we came upon another lock undergoing major work including replacing gates and paddle gear. 

 

 Finally we cleared lock 66 of what the old boat people used to call "Heartbreak Hill" and after cruising on for a few miles moored up just west of Sandbach. There are no good moorings here but we did find a rather unorthodox spot by tying up to a few posts stuck into the canal bank. The small blue flowers on the bank are the wild geranium.

 Not perhaps the longest day that we have ever done but a good effort to do 25 locks and 9 miles in only 7 hours and 40 minutes.

 Today: 9 Miles, 25 Locks and 7.6 Hours.

 Trip: 173 Miles, 130 Locks and 85.7 Hours.