Whaley Bridge.

                        

When leaving Bugsworth Basin we paused at the water tap to fill up, then on to the junction we turned left along to Whaley Bridge Basin where we turned and moored up. Most of the shops etc were spread out along one main street, where this unusual building stood. I went into the Co-op and the bakery shop for a few goodies to cheer us up in the dull damp weather we are having. The only charity shop was spread over two ground floor rooms and several upstairs rooms. Their book room was well organised with endless books, so I quickly managed to find three interesting books for us to read. When I re-emerged onto the street himself had wondered why I had  taken so long! Although the mooring was for seven days, it was so dark under the dripping trees and near the noisy road, so we decided to move on.

         

As we passed Bugsworth Junction again, we were joined by Nb Erin Mae who followed us along to the first swing bridge which I opened for us both to go through. On passing they said they would ‘return the compliment’ at the next one. So we leapfrogged along taking it in turns to do the next three which was nice and also speeded things up. There were several narrows where we scraped our bottom and we couldn’t moor up anywhere because it was too shallow. We soon reached Marple Junction and turned left under Bridge 1. We had passed under Bridge 2 before finding a vacant space and pulled into the side. There were underwater rocks protruding out into the canal. We omitted seeing the dark blue warning sign spray painted on the edging stones before running aground. On jiggling the boat around and pulling it forward we were able to get in far enough to moor, hooray! As we had some washing hanging up to dry and our coats and boots were fairly wet from the rain, we lit the Squirrel. Soon the dinner was cooking and we were inside getting cosy and warm.