Tuesday 6th August 2013

The weather was much better today - not as hot as in July but no rain. The treat of having the newspaper to read at breakfast was appreciated and then we walked down to the Silk Museum. Neither of us had realised that Macclesfield was such a centre of the British Silk Industry. It appears that there was a cottage industry of making buttons in the town and then an entrepreneur brought silk from London to cover the buttons and the industry grew from there- helped by the fact that France was at war and the supply of silk from that country was reduced. 

The best part of the morning was the tour of Paradise Mill. Graham and I were the only people on the tour so had a very personalised visit. The mill only closed in 1980 and all the looms, bobbin threading machines etc. are still there and in working order. We were allowed to try weaving on the old looms, very hard to push down with the right leg and quite difficult to get the co-ordination with sending the shuttle to and fro. The punched cards which are used to produce the patterns are just like the old punched cards for computers and these were invented in 1801! Photographs were not allowed but I hoped to buy a postcard of the mill room but surprisingly there were none for sale.

Macclesfield could make much more of the canal. The moorings are pretty awful and the view as we had breakfast was not inspiring.

We returned to the boat in the afternoon and bought diesel and oil at the local marina before sailing back up the Macclesfield canal to Bollington. We turned the boat and have nice moorings. Peaceful, and quite near to the town.

Tomorrow we will attempt our first oil change!