Chester onwards.

Moored this evening some 5 miles outside of Chester - just about the safest distance to stop by all accounts! A good run through today stopping only for diesel and pump out at Venetian Marina just before the turn onto the Main line. Did manage to spot a lesser spotted lengthsman doing a great job mowing the towpath though!

OK, here's a puzzle for you. Take a look at this picture carefully and work out what is happening. No, your eyes aren't decieving you, there really are 2 boats facing me, one is coming up beside me before I exit a lock chamber and the other is facing my bow and I'm facing his. Don't cheat - only when you give up, can you look below for the answer!!

Did you guess correctly?
At the staircase locks in Bunbury, we met 2 boats waiting to come up and us waiting to go down. The locks were split 50/50 in favour of either of us so we passed them in the middle! We locked down using our water to lift them up to meet us. One of the boats then slid past me into our lock next to me, allowing me to cross over and pull into his space next to the other upcoming boat. The other upcoming boat then slid forward into my space allowing them to complete their uphill lock and me to complete my downhill lock as the next picture shows.

Decided to attempt a stop in Chester at some point to look at new cameras! More than likely, we will push on to Ellesmere tomorrow and do the museum and stop off at Chester on the way back using the 'out of town' park and ride to keep the boat a safe distance away!

It's taken 3 weeks to get this far and what seemed like 4 weeks to get past the mile and a half of moored houses on the lead in to Chester! Whilst I'm on the subject of statistics, up to this point, on this summer trip alone, I have completed 402 lock miles - this breaks down to being 265 miles and 137 locks - not bad!!

****STOP PRESS****

I have added a link to my website of a small video file of my Anderton Boat Lift ascent. I say small, it's 8MB but should stream into your default video/media player on your system. Find it by clicking on the 'Cruise reports' link from the navigation menu, then select '2007 summer trip' and you will find the link at the bottom of that page - enjoy it!