Sunday 12th August 2007
Church Minshull - Chellshill (15¼ miles, 19 locks)
The weather changed and today was overcast with increasingly strong winds and showers as we headed for Middlewich and then south down the Trent and Mersey Canal.
Approaching one of the locks, a boat emerged and I started moving forward to enter the lock. The other boat then stopped, blocking the entrance to the lock while two of their crew closed the lock gates and jumped onto the boat. They couldn't understand why I was irritated or even why Robert was now running to open the gates again to let me in. How do some people even manage simple day to day tasks like eating and breathing....?
We intended to eat at the Romping Donkey pub, advertised as "dog-friendly", but decided to carry on past Pierpoint Locks to escape the noise of the motorway before we moored. Jen checked out the pub, but their idea of dog-friendly was a scruffy little area outside round the back.
We finally stopped about a mile from the pub in pleasant countryside near a farm. The weather had improved slightly and we had no contingency plan for dinner other than walking back to the pub.
We were allowed to sit at the tables outside the front of the pub with the dogs, although other dog-friendly pubs we have been to allow them into the public bar area. Lucy, Robert, Rosemary and I had a roast dinner from the carvery which was pretty good. Jen opted for a ploughman's which arrived on a breadboard and consisted of bread, cheese, a bowl of boiled potatoes, and several pots of pickled things - the strangest ploughman's we had ever seen.