12 locks and wet pair of trousers…..

Yesterday we travelled through Congleton and Buglawton to Bosley Locks. 

The old Wharf at Congleton has been almost seamlessly been assimilated into a modern housing development.

The mile posts look suspiciously like gravestones, they are so large.

A roving bridge, a turnover bridge or a snake bridge, call it what you will – these are very typical here on the Macc, built in such a way as to allow the horse towing the barge to be lead over the canal when the towpath changes sides, without undoing the towing rope.

There is some truly wonderful scenery – the photos don’t do it justice.

We ascended the 12 Bosley locks with little difficulty, taking just on two hours, all the locks were in our favour, with only the odd one or two which had leaked a bit, and needed a paddle to be cracked in order to open the gates.  However, I did get a shot of water right up my c***f when I stood right over a hole while opening one of the top paddles – I looked like I had wet myself!  Did Rog laugh his head off?  Of course he did!  We met one or two boats going the other way, but apart from that, hardly saw another boat all day – it’s not exactly busy at the moment.

We found a reasonably decent spot to moor (a rarity, we are discovering) just around the bend from the top lock, and hadn’t been there long when John and Monica on nb Holly came around the corner and decided to moor next to us.  We got the chairs out on the bank and had a very convivial couple of hours, shared some wine and beer, and generally got to know each other.  Hence no blog yesterday!  Ozzy and his new-found pal Ollie had a wonderful time chasing each other around, and were absolutely shattered by the time we went back into our respective boats – they crashed out and not a peep was heard from either of them until this morning.

7.5  miles and 12 locks