Sunday dawns hot and sunny again and following a brief walk to buy a Sunday paper we’re heading down the last 4 Audlem locks ready to head for Nantwich.
Just past the bottom lock is moored a boat with the name “Cousin Jack” – which immediately interests us as it’s the name of a song by Show of Hands which Nick & Chris also sing, Not only the name but part of the lyrics are painted on the side. Shame the camera isn’t to hand, but we hope it will come past us later.
The good weather brought everyone out and we were part of a long queue at the two Hack Green locks, thus delaying our arrival in Nantwich somewhat. Still we found a pleasant enough mooring and settled down to enjoy the rest of the sunny afternoon, before heading into town for an (excellent) Chinese takeaway in the evening.
On Monday we moved the boat up nearer the marina as we didn’t fancy lugging 3 bags of laundry nearly a mile down the towpath. Said bags deposited for a service wash, we repaired to the marina cafe for a cooked breakfast before going into Nantwich again for supplies. The town, which we’ve always liked for its wide variety of independent shops, now also boasts an M & S Food! I also bought myself some new walking boots (I left my others at home) as I’m getting fed up with wet feet.
Having collected our washing, we were ready to set off when what should come past but “Cousin Jack”. Brian called out his appreciation of the name and the guy steering asked if we could possibly stay in the mooring space until he’d got water so that he could reverse back to it. Brian said yes if he could take some photos of the boat!
(See the whole song here: Cousin Jack Lyrics)
The boat’s owners, great fans of Show of Hands, were Cornish and his great-grandfather, known to all as Cousin Jack, had been a tin miner who went out to South Africa to mine diamonds, just as in the song. So they couldn’t really call their boat anything else!
They also had a great basset hound:
We finally set off at 3 pm to get to the Llangollen canal. Just 10 minutes before we reached Hurlestone Locks at the start of the canal, the heavens opened. Had I got my new waterproof boots on? I had not. So I ended up squelching around another four locks before we finally headed south through the glorious countryside that borders the Llangollen, then for good measure got through another two locks before mooring up for the day.
Tuesday, and it’s Brian’s birthday. Our intended destination is Grindley Brook as my suggestion of Bridge 38 – Old Man’s Bridge was not well received.
A nice bright day to start with, and even some sunshine, but by lunchtime the rain was back and I got to try out my boots. Brilliant.
We worked our way up the Grindley Brook staircase locks with the least talkative lock keeper ever, however we were kept amused by the remarks of gongoozlers:
“How many berths does your boat have?” “Four” “Oh. But it looks so long…”
And today’s special: “Have you met a couple called Mike and Elaine on your travels?” “Not sure – what’s their boat called?” “I don’t know. I just thought all you boaters talked to one another.”
Ooh, we just love it!
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