Tuesday 27th December

We woke up with the sunrise, had tea in bed then got up and had porridge. Pip got a slow cooker for Christmas. Its power consumption is less than 150 watts so I figured it should be ok to run all day with the engine on. So Pip made a chicken casserole. It was a bit strange making a casserole at 09:30 in the morning but it went into the pot and then we set off for the first lock.
The weather seems to be in our favour. There was some sunshine and it was not too cold. The wind had died down compared to yesterday. We made steady progress up through 8 locks. Most of the twinned locks had one or other lock in our favour and we met a couple of boats coming down so most of the single locks were empty too. We stopped for a cup of tea near the noisy M6 at around 12:30. But this soon turned into a lunch stop. We then carried on and did another 10 locks. I do like these "Cheshire Locks" and at this time of year they are not busy. I think it a shame that some of the twin locks have only one chamber in use. Its all down to money I suppose. 
Near to Rode Heath our way was blocked by some untethered tuppaware. Some walkers on the towpath managed to pull it into the bank and I jumped off and banged in its mooring spikes. We then ascended the very picturesque Lawton Treble Locks (according to Pearsons this used to be a staircase) then one more lock, Hall's Lock and after that we had run out of daylight at 4:15. We moored in exactly this spot in April 2008. We were in a hire boat, Bergen Fjord from Anderson Boats and that night it snowed. I hope it doesn't snow tonight! 
We sat down to the casserole from the slow cooker. Very yummy. 

The telly works here, the waterpump is still pumping about every 15 minutes, the stern gland is leaking quite a lot so the bilge pump kicks in frequently but I understand this will be fixed on the next maintenance fortnight.

We plan to visit the Blue Bell at Kidsgrove tomorrow, real ale, no jukebox, no machines, sounds like my kind of pub.

Mick