End of the road

Tuesday night in Chester held no terrors after all, apart from my dream imagination running wild with thoughts of what could happen going down the staircase locks the next morning. When we got going we followed Tony and Karina on NB No Brass past the King Charles tower…

under the city wall…

and into the top lock of the 3-part staircase.

Emerging eventually from the bottom lock you are faced with a right angle turn into the basin…

which was more interesting than expected.

Leaving the basin we passed NB Heart of Oak, the heart of which seemed tragically to have fallen out of her. We think one of the people on the towpath may have been the owner, trying to work out what to do next.

Just out of the basin you can do a 180˚ turn to drop down to the River Dee…

but we carried straight on, circled round the northwest side of Chester, tied up in a really nice spot and got chatting with a cycling couple, Dave and Lynette, who come from Morton on the Wirrall (see, Dave, I did remember!). These chance encounters are all part of the fun of the adventure.

Our real reason for mooring up here was to meet up with our friends Alastair and Sue who were driving down from West Kirby for the evening. I hadn't seen them for about twenty years, and my best beloved not for something nearer thirty-five, so it was great to see them again and chew the cud together.

This morning we pushed on to Ellesmere Port – if you're on a boat your entrance fee for the National Waterways Museum gets you a mooring in the more secure lower basin, so we dropped down the locks…

and tied up by a rather odd assortment of boats and buildings.

The museum is being developed really well on its 7 acre site, and has a nice mix of the informative and the nostalgic (each of the four cottages in this "Porters' Row" is done out to match a different era from Victorian to the fifties).

Finally, we took an evening stroll down to see the Manchester ship canal – Ellesmere Port is where the Shroppie ends. You can lock down onto it provided all your paperwork and equipment meets their standards, but we shan't be doing so.

Interestingly, the information boards in the museum have the spelling "Shroppy". Now there's a debate for pedants!