Thursday 25 August 2016

A Green canal

Since joining the Macc, we've cruised from Hall Green and Scholar Green to Whiteley Green via Lyme Green, a very pleasant run indeed. Unfortunately, as last year, the canal is green in other ways too, with massive amounts of vegetation projecting from the offside, from the towpath in many places and from both sides of the bridge holes, making steering through them quite problematic. If only Manchester and Pennine were as successful as the old Central Shires was at recruiting volunteer support, things might be a lot better.

All it needs is some regular working parties with basic tools to slash it all back and keep the cut looking spruce and trim. We've seen volockies on the Bosley flight, and very helpful they were, but no sign of other volunteer input. I can't believe that the citizens of Cheshire East are less supportive than those of East Staffs or South Derbyshire.

Hey ho, we set off just on eight, as planned, and I steered us through Macc itself and on to Bollington. There was actually space on the new pontoon at Macc, though of course there might have been a boat there overnight which set off early like ourselves. Gurnett Aqueduct, on the other hand, was pretty well rammed.

We encountered a couple of boats going through the narrows behind Hurdsfield (where else?) but had no problem getting by. As expected, it took a smidgen over two and a half hours to get to Whiteley Green, where we found just one space, fortunately about 80' long.

We've been peacefully recovering here, sitting out the rain which arrived over lunchtime. It had pretty well cleared by three, so we walked into Bollington along the Middlewood Way, an excellent route to get to the shops. I mainly wanted to restock on meat, so we went to the far end of the stretch through Bollington, debouching onto Grimshaw Lane and walking down the hill to the butcher, one of two just there.

I wanted some more fresh veg, so we walked back along the Way to the exit for the Co-op, just before the viaduct going north, and popped down to use the nice new store down there. It's a bit of a test of determination to get back up the steps to the viaduct, but we did it and were soon strolling along with filled day sacks.

It's less than 90 minutes from here to the Deeps at Poynton, so we'll have a lazy start in the morning – no use turning up there before 10, we'd never find a space near the far end where we want to be. I'm thinking of the Ocado delivery here...



 

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