Bartimaeus

We had another lock heavy morning today. The locks on this section come in groups of two or four with a noticeable gap in-between.  These are still the set that were originally twinned, though no longer consistently so.  We made pretty good progress with me working the earlier ones until Clare got fed up with trying to deal with the wind while waiting.  We swapped jobs to maximise relaxation and enjoyment.

Our target to reach the Ribble Link next weekend stems from a request to be “somewhere near the M6”.  We chose to try to get as far north as we could manage.  Today however we were certainly near the M6 – less than a boat length, but vertically.

We stopped for lunch at the start of a longer gap in the locks.  Over lunch we decided that the remaining nine locks on this stretch could wait until tomorrow.  We moved on to another quiet spot for a rural mooring.  Some ominous black clouds confirmed that it was a fine idea to be moored up rather than locking.

Clare had spotted that one of the chains holding the bow fender was broken.  We usually refer to this as the “nose cosy” after it was named such on a holiday many years ago.  After some investigation I identified the much bent, but not broken connector.  With some careful blows with the hammer normally used to insert mooring spikes I was able to re-use it.  The final operation was done using the boat hook and pliers, and was a team effort with both of us balanced on the bow hatch. We should probably replace it at the next opportunity.