|
For a start it was mostly sunny and warm with occasional dark clouds that threatened rain but managed only a few desultory spots.
We cruised for hours, walked the walls of Chester and its busy Rows and dodged determined shoppers bearing down on us in the main street.
We locked and locked again, a major departure for me to join Liz and Chris with a windlass while Dave drove the boat - in our liveaboard days Liz did most of the hard work while I tried to convince her that wrestling with a tiller arm and manoeuvring the boat into a wide lock alongside another worried boat-owner was equally draining. And she's still the expert, as you can from the action shot above, taken at the first of many beautiful locks.
There were long stretches of relaxation, of course. After only four hours of travel on Friday afternoon we tied up at a quiet rural mooring a field or two away from Beeston Castle and sat around drinking cold rose wine and gin and tonic until Dave's first meal of chili con carne (one of the best sauces I've tasted in this dish) and an earlyish night. With a 6am start on Saturday we reached the staircase at Chester in about five hours, and then descended in company with a friendly couple on Lancelot, before mooring in the basin next to Uccello whose owners, the Birds, turned out to be friends of Derek and Dot Canvin on Gipsy Rover.
|
|
Beeston Castle mooring
|
The staircase locks were certainly deep. But they were smaller than I remembered. They were lighter than I remembered. And they could in no way be described as cavernous except perhaps where you exit into a wide section carved into solid rock.
My one remaining memory of that first holiday turned out to be entirely false. I was hoping to conclude this account by declaring that the ghost had been laid. In reality, it was merely the ghost memory that had gone.
The rest of the weekend, until we left Aeshna around midday on Monday in time to collect Molly from kennels, was unshadowed. Saturday was our 41st wedding anniversary and Dave and Chris had prepared an evening meal of all our favourites, starting with prawns fried in sweet chili sauce, progressing through a tasty chicken dish to a splendid tiramisu. The cheeses we had supplied were pretty good apart from a camembert that had spent too long in a steadily warming cold box. The smell was awful and so, apparently, was the flavour. I try never to eat runny cheeses so have to take the word of three fellow boaters who carried the offending package to the back deck before binning it next day.
|
Chester basin from the city wall
|
|
|
|
Sunday allowed us to lie a little longer in bed - we didn't set off until nearly 7am. Early starts were no problem for us, of course, after years of following a similar pattern. And if we had to tackle the wide locks on our own, well we had enough experience to cope with that, opening the ground paddle slowly on the boat side until the lock was half full. Except where a lock had a mind of its own - and then Dave had to rope up and hang on firmly until the surge of water on the "wrong side" had eased up. We, in this context, by the way, was usually Liz and I because Chris was running her customary three miles before breakfast. No wonder she always looks so fit! (See left) She resumed locking or steering as soon as she had showered.
|
|
By lunch we were back at the Beeston Castle mooring and later, while Liz and Chris walked up to the castle, Dave and I took the boat through a couple of locks so he could top up his diesel at Chas Harden's ready for a longer cruise of the Four Counties ring. We moored at another quiet spot above the second lock and then sat out for the rest of the day until Dave's traditional Sunday roast dinner - succulent lamb and various vegetables - with another of Chris's puddings, a light and tangy "lemon dainty."
Lunches had been provided and organised by us, mostly salads with pork pie, cold meats or pizzas, but on Monday Dave cooked us a final brunch that is described in the main Latest News journal entry. We left our hosts with a full stomach and glowing tanned faces, weather-beaten by wind as well as sun, plus the happy thought that we'll meet again in a few months for one of our "half-way houses" at the Miners' Arms, Adlington, before Chris and Dave travel to Quarry Lane for a weekend with us in November.
|
|
