It’s official….

Spring is here! St David’s day and the first day of Spring. Pretty good too, blue skies, warm(ish) sunshine, birds singing and the first sprouts shooting up through the leaf mould.

We swapped neighbours at the flash last Thursday. Sue and Vic had moved on to Anderton, but Chas and Ann on Moore 2 Life arrived. They’d decided to have a look up this way, the first time in 8 years, before heading over towards the Shroppie.

We moved in extended convoy up to Anderton on Saturday, and have enjoyed the weekend exploring the nature parks on both sides of the canal.

We’ll be parting company tomorrow; we’re heading north and they are heading back to Middlewich. We’ll catch up again later in the month, I guess.

We’ve got a sort of plan for the next couple of months. Unfortunately it involves a bit of hanging around in the area again, but there’re worse places.

Now we’re not able to get to my Liverpool race by boat, we’ll have to leave the boat somewhere for the day and travel up by car. Then, a fortnight later, she’ll be going into Orchard Marina for much needed (after all the ice breaking) bottom blacking, for a few days.

Leaving there we’ll head south to Hardings Wood, onto the Macclesfield and Peak Forest into Manchester, dropping down into Castlefield via the Ashton and Rochdale Canals for my 10K in the city centre in the middle of May. This was part of the original itinerary.

From Manchester we’ll head across to Liverpool using the new link to get through the docks. We’ll stay there a few days then head back out again. After that, well I don’t know. As we’re up in the top left corner of the system, it might be worth trying to get a passage across the Ribble Link up to the Lancaster Canal. We’ll see.

Oh and thanks to Alan from NB Andante, moored near the boat lift yesterday, for introducing himself. It’s always a pleasure to meet people who read my sometimes aimless scribblings. Makes it all worth while, somehow.

Locks 0, miles 5½