Saturday 27th July 2013

We left Aston-under-Lyne at 9am and headed down the Peak Forest Canal towards Marple. Just before reaching the town you cross an aqueduct with the railway viaduct alongside. We were expecting to meet Fiona, Nigel and Jess in Marple and their train passed over as we were on the aqueduct but unfortunately they didn't know that we were looking up at them.

They walked down the flight of locks to meet us as we were in the second of the flight of 16.

ll went well for another 2 locks and then we were told that one of the pounds was dry so the boat ahead of us and all those following were stuck until the decision was made to open the paddles of the lock above and fill the pound. The photos show the empty and later the full pound. A chap who is in charge of 1 reservoir which feeds 4 canals in the area also appeared and he said that there has been no fresh rain since the snow melt.

We could now get moving quite quickly as the lock crew- Graham, Nigel, Fiona and Jess could set the locks for me to move into. There was another slight hold up when another pound seemed to empty but all was well until the final lock.

A log became stuck behind one of the lock gates and the boat became jammed in the entrance! More discussions on how to free it ensued and finally Nigel (sensibly taking off his white T shirt) and Graham ended up on their backs pushing with their feet against the gates, Fiona and Jess were instructed to wobble the gate, two strangers on the bank were pulling the back rope and I was reversing the engine!

Success at last and we only had to alter the restaurant reservation by one hour!

Still there was more drama to come. The rain started. The pub was across a couple of fields and it wasn't raining too hard when we walked there. During the evening we could see thunder and lightning and the walk back was in the dark, with a torch and the rain lashing down. Fiona touched an electric wire in a field and got a shock and we were all drenched, especially our shoes!