Monday 3rd July 2017

After spending a peaceful night ( apart from the very noisy birds early this morning) we left at 9am in drizzle/ showers. As usual Graham had checked the weed hatch and for the first time on this journey he found a lage collection of plastic bags which wrap themselves round the prop.

We moved round to ASDA for shopping and set off down the Blackburn flight of six locks. The first 2 were fine but then we were told that the next pound ( area between 2 locks) had drained of water by someone leaving a lower paddle open. The empty pound revealed shopping trolleys, wheelie bins and other rubbish. These two photos show how low it was before we added water from higher up the flight.

The empty lock revealed a washing machine which had been dumped!

We finally made it to the bottom and passed Ewood Park, the home of Blackburn Rovers ( and more important for Graham, a former Club where Alan Shearer played)

Some of the bridges here are numbered using the old blue and yellow colours.

This horse was admiring the canal from a vantage point.

The name of this boat drew a smile.

We finally reached the Chorley locks two hours after we expected to due to the earlier problems. The volunteers were just going home at 4pm. Still the sun was shining so we set off down them and moored at 6.15pm just below the bottom lock. Thirteen locks today. Time for bed.