Bartimaeus

When we returned to Macclesfield yesterday morning, I was hoping to buy more goodies in the bakery up the road from the mooring.  We were too late for most things, and then further disappointed to discover that they wouldn’t be open in the morning either.  The main point of our return was to meet Bryn when his train arrived late in the evening.  His journey had gone smoothly enough, but he is suffering from a cold.

This morning, we cast off without waiting for him to rise – we had some miles to cover.  It turned out he was just surfacing as we set off.  He had his breakfast pastry (purchased yesterday) outside – a brave choice on a misty November morning.  I had time to give the bread rolls a second kneading before getting off to operate the swing bridge.

I’d had no trouble with opening and closing the bridge until I came to remove my key.  I had struggled for a while before Bryn came back to see if he could help.  We eventually found that if I slightly lifted the (heavy) handle he was then able to turn the key enough to extract it – phew!

It wasn’t far to the site of the removed bridge.  Work was still continuing on the bank.  Three workers were engaged in removing some of the hydraulic gear from under the bridge deck – I was surprised that they seemed to be using a pneumatic drill.

It was another hour before we reached the top of the Bosley Locks.  The rolls were due out of the oven a few minutes after we reached the top, so I suggested we have lunch before proceeding.  We stopped on the lock bollards hoping not to be in anybody’s way.  When I’d finished my lunch I went to see what the situation was.  A woman had just set the lock to empty for her boat coming up the locks.  I was able to help her a little and establish that we weren’t in their way.  By the time they had come out of the lock, Clare had finished her lunch too and drove Bartimaeus in.

Bryn appeared just in time to close the gate behind them and we started working the flight.  We are a well-practised crew on lock flights and quickly fell in to an excellent rhythm.  I left Bryn to tidy up behind me and went ahead to get the next lock ready.  I was surprised how hard a local mole appeared to have worked to get past the lock wall – I hope for everyone’s sake it doesn’t get through!

We’d been warned by several people that there were low pounds in the flight.  We found almost every lock completely full and no shortage of water – each pound we reached seemed to be overflowing in to the next.  We met a couple of other boats coming up the flight, but managed to pass in pounds with hardly any discernible delay.  Clare and I swapped jobs with a few locks to go.  We reached the bottom of the flight having taken about six minutes per lock with more than an hour of daylight to spare.  The exit in to the mist at the bottom was in stark contrast to the last time the three of us had come this way in early 2023.

The visibility improved slightly later to give us a partial view of a nearby hill called The Cloud.