Wednesday 28th December.

Woke up with the sunrise again, good job its not June! We had a cooked breakfast this morning in light of the expected cold and wind. We set off about 11 and carried on onwards and upwards. It was windy, at one point we struggled to get away from the bank despite much pushing and bow thrusting. Incidently I think we need a new bow thruster battery as it goes flat very quickly. One or two of the locks were quite fierce despite careful raising of paddles. They all had a tendency to drag WD forward despite the use of reverse gear. One top gate got quite a bash. No damage done though. At lock 42, just under the aqueduct which carries the Macclesfield over the Trent & Mersey, there were lots of bunches of flowers. It turns out that a teenager died there at the beginning of December. Apparently he was trying to jump across the lock. Very sad. Anyway, one more lock and we were at the top of the flight. We made a sharp right hand turn onto the Mac and pootled up there for a while. We bought a bag of Taybright coal at Heritage Narrowboats (by the way thanks to Howard for leaving us with a full bag last Saturday). We winded there and started heading back into the stiff breeze. We moored up just near to the aqueduct over the T & M and headed off to Tescos for some provisions. We then cooked tea and afterwards headed off on foot to the Blue Bell. Nice beer, nice atmosphere, We would have stayed longer if we hadn't been so tired. The wind takes it out of you.

More tomorrow.