And They're Off

We have finally left Macclesfield after just over 4 glorious weeks of family and friends reunions!

But First..........

On Saturday night we went to Sutton Hall pub for dinner, with several members of Elaine's family plus the doggies of course.  It is a pretty flash joint and quite nice that they allow dogs...no complaints from us!  It was one of those nights where you laugh so much that you cry, unfortunately none of the funny stories can be mentioned on the blog!

Me, El's Dad, El's bro in law and El's bro

El's sister and Bomboliscious

one of the funny stories 

Sammy trying to slip in the tongue

 

Dog tired

The Sutton Hall Pub employs very good looking young girls, there was one that was not only good looking but had the figure to match and during the night we had a bit of a chat; the next day we went to Tesco to do some shopping so I sat outside on the bench with the dogs and was soon joined by a woman who introduced herself as 'Susan' and she sat down and we had a good chat.  Susan was a bit rough around the edges; I think she may have been an ex-pro and maybe a junkie, as she kept pointing out the junkies she knew as they walked past.  We were soon joined by a said junkie and I was having a good old chat to the pair of them and who should walk past but the very fit barmaid from the pub, I said 'hello' but she ignored me.....WHY? !!

Sunday they were hanging T Shirt banners in the streets of Macclesfield for the Barnaby festival, and I haven't got a clue what is about.....but it starts on 21st June !

Sunday we went for a walk over the hills, stopping at a couple of pubs along the way and meeting a few of the locals ...(just by the beer garden!)

Glorious views..

Elaine's friend Jane joined us with her dog Pip, who likes sticks!

So to Today (Monday) we finally left Macclesfield and headed for the Bosley Locks, we were joined by Elaine's brother Trevor for the day.

Stopping the traffic to open the hydraulic swing bridge at Fools Nook

 First stop Bosley top lock to empty the cassettes, dump the rubbish and fill with water. Also the sun was shining and it was rather warm - I wore my shorts, sandals and tshirt; Elaine and Trev had their wellies on.....I won as the weather was great.  

The boys stood guard, well Bombo slept actually...

 

 He's awake!

Nice big stone locks

Some a bit leaky

El posing

El walking between locks with "The Cloud" in the background

Now both the dogs were asleep - they enjoy this narrowboat caper 

When we got to the bottom of the locks we stopped for lunch as I was exhausted steering 68ft of boat for 4 hours........El and Trev were fine.....Joke, OK!

After lunch we carried on towards Congleton.  We passed a Border Collie on the towpath minding its own business.  Bombo barked at it, on hearing this Sam woke from his slumber, jumped up on the side of the boat and fell straight into the canal ... his poor little face was in absolute panic and he was just treading water!  I hit reverse hard, the boat stopped pretty quick.  I reversed back knocked it out of gear and picked him up from the stern of the boat, the poor little bugger was shaking.  Elaine gave him a hot shower and he soon recovered, as you can see below. Life jackets tomorrow!         

We dropped Trev off at bridge 75 in Congleton which is right next to the train station; it took him 7 mins to get to  Macclesfield for a journey that had taken us nearly 7 hours! Never mind we are not in a hurry.

We are now moored just past Congleton and I am nursing a cut foot...I took the dogs for their evening walk, we went through a field and as I was climbing over a gate I caught it on a rusty bit of pipe and took a nice chunk out of my foot.  Nurse Elaine sorted it out when I got back to the boat.

Tomorrow's goal is to find a good pub to watch the footy; we can watch it on the boat, but prefer the atmosphere of a pub!