Changing Weather and Changing Plans (again)

For the past few days we have not travelled very far, only about 15miles.  With the change in weather, as in from hot and dry to cool and mostly wet, we have moored up early in the day to escape the wet weather.  Not that Andrew really minds steering in the rain but I would prefer not to do the locks in the wet.  And there have been locks each of the past few days.

Not many pictures either, Blackburn was not quite as interesting canal wise.  A quick stop at Asda to once more stock up and we then tackled the locks.  Luckily the weather held out and there were some rather interesting bystanders at the bottom lock.  We had been warned about the locals that inhabited this one lock but they did not give me any problems.  Maybe as it was still relatively early in the day, being before 1pm they had not had the chance to imbibe too much.  They even helped me open the top gate to let Andrew bring the boat in.

Old Mill now converted to offices

The Wharf

Once more a fairly disappointing sunset :(  but I guess at least it was one we could see.  Not like the one 2 days ago which looked like it was going to be great, until the rain came over again and then again :(  ooops and again !

Tonight we are moored up above the Johnson's Hillock Locks, the last flight before hitting the Wigan Flight.  We had stopped earlier by a nature reserve, only, after a walk around the reserve it was not quite the photo opportunity that I was hoping for, so we continued to here.  We filled with water and while waiting for the tank to fill the rain started.  Tank full, Andrew pushed us over to the visitor moorings across the canal, getting soaked through to get us over and safely moored up.

While sitting here listening to the rain again, we discussed our travel plans as we realise that we only have 2 months before we need to look for winter work.  With the possibility of not being able to get in to Liverpool, as we have been reliably informed that passage in to Liverpool is fully booked until early September and we would have to rely on someone cancelling their booking, we will not attempt this leg until another time.  We will also skip going in to Manchester and instead will continue on to the Anderton Lift and the River Weaver and from there on to Langollen and Montgomery Canals.  Time really does fly when you have so much that you want to achieve :D

We will look at doing both Liverpool and the Lancaster Canal at another time :)  Along with Manchester.

So that is where I shall leave you tonight.  Keep well everyone :)