Bosley Locks to Macclesfield
Wednesday 4th September
We are now moving from Bosley Locks to Macclesfield. We are moving on today because of a couple of reasons. The first reason is that we are on a 48hr mooring at Dane Aqueduct and time has run out for us. The second reason is that we need to go find services and pump out!
We are at the bottom of Bosley Locks which is a flight of 12 locks in the space of one mile. These locks raise the canal level to well over 500 ft above sea level. We set off at about 10am and we were at the second lock when a volunteer lock keeper appeared. His name was Ian, he was lovely and helped us all the way up the locks. These volunteers are fabulous and always a welcome site - so thanks to you all.
It took a couple of hours and luckily the rain held off until we had just moored up - very lucky! The services at the top of the locks were good and we had a nice chat to the volunteers while they had their lunch!
Luckily we made it through the locks with no rain but the sky went very black so we decided to moor up. We timed it perfectly as the heavens opened just as we got in.
Thursday 5th September
We had a lovely cruise to Macclesfield today. No locks today, just a couple of swing bridges.
We did think that we might stop at Gurnett Aqueduct but there were no spaces so we carried on and managed to get a mooring on the pontoons at Macclesfield.
We found Tesco's so we will be going there tomorrow for our shopping. Macclesfield is a nice little town with plenty of shops, including a butcher and a nice little deli. We also found a chippy and treated ourselves to a carton of chips each - delicious. Macclesfield is a mixture of modern industry and old market town, with cobbled streets. In the 18th century it was one of the leading silk producing centres. There is a silk museum and Paradise Mill, which was once a handloom silk-weaving mill.
The Hovis Mill in Macclesfield was built in the 1820s and was the birthplace of the famous flour. The canal played an important part in transport to and from the mill, as can be seen from the loading bay at water level. After Hovis moved their milling activities to Manchester, they continued to use this mill as a print works for their packaging and publicity material.
After our walk around town we went into the canal side pub called Puss in Boots. It was a bit of a disappointment as they had no real ale on tap!
The Wharf however, turned out to be a very good pub. It is dog-friendly, it has a very good choice of real ale and a very friendly and helpful landlord. We went back on Friday night when there was a live band on and we had a great night.
Friday was wet and miserable. We did the shopping at Tesco. It was only about a 20 minute walk, and we had our granny trolley to carry it all home in.
Saturday was spent cleaning and be polishing Hang Loose (well, one side of it - Paul has already done the other side). We have really enjoyed this mooring. First time on a pontoon!
And Sunday we were on the move again .....
See you in Bollington xx
