Showers, aromatic animals and not narrow enough boats

Back to normal today after 2 early starts. I’m blaming the weather, it was persistently wet when I woke at 07:00, so I rolled over and went back to sleep. The Eberspacher boiler woke me up again just after 8 with it’s “clunk clunk clunk” start up sequence. It comes on for just an hour each day to take the overnight chill off the cabin and give us hot water for abluting.

It was still a bit damp when I took Megdog out for a perambulation, but started to fair up later in the morning while I was catching up on yesterday’s blog entry. Fleeting glimpses of the sun encouraged us to get on, so we cast off at just before 13:00, with the intention of getting up near Chirk.

We didn’t really want to stay another day at Frankton anyway, the channel is narrow here, so passing boats, even those going slowly, cause us to move about a bit. Meg gets a bit nervous if we jolt the bank. It must be something to do with the fact that she can’t see what’s going on.

Anyhow, off we went, me in just a T shirt (and shorts, socks and boots of course, what do you take me for…) in a warm sunny spell which lasted all of 5 minutes before the wind gusted and a heavy, near horizontal shower hit us. Mags scuttled back inside, leaving muggins struggling to steer and get a jacket on at the same time.

Even the sheep had more sense than me!
Maestermyn Cruising Holidays. Apparently Harrison Ford hired a boat here in 2004. Indiana Jones and the Last Cruise-ade? Groan!!

We pressed on with the rain easing, till the next shower convinced me that this is not what I want to be doing on a Wednesday afternoon. So I tried to pull in on the moorings between bridges 6 and 7, but Seyella was having none of that, dragging her bum on the bottom while we were still 2 feet from the bank.

The next “moorportunity” was better, and we got the bow in with the stern only a foot from the bank. Tied up within sight of bridge 9, we decided that an hour’s cruising is quite enough for today, thankyou.
There’s a lot of sheep in the fields around here, and unfortunately the field immediately upwind of us seems to have more than it’s share of particularly smelly ones. Still, they’ll probably be a little less aromatic when they dry off.

Moored up. The pongy ovines are off camera to the left…
Just witnessed one of those scenes quite common on this canal at bridges; 2 hire boats trying to go through at the same time, from opposite directions! The private boat this side is keeping well out of the way.

Locks 0, miles 2