Before committing to the Bosley locks, we thought we’d better just check on the Marple Locks situation… and sure enough, they were closed again. Lock 9 had collapsed last year, and they’d closed and drained the whole flight while major repairs to Lock 9 were made. Took them all winter, and the original scheduled Easter opening slipped to the second May Bank Holiday).  Then – quelle surprise – when the locks were reopened, Lock 11 started falling apart in much the same way, having been de-watered all those months, just as a lot of boaters had predicted. There was talk of limited access, then more boats got stuck, so they closed Lock 11, and said “we’ll let you know what’s happening at the end of the week”.

Not wishing to head all the way up to Marple only to find that the flight still remained closed, we decided to revert to Plan B: going North West before turning back towards Manchester, then crossing the Pennines on the formidable Leeds & Liverpool Canal. A long way round, given we were trying to get to Wakefield for mid-July for Morris Dancing reasons; a route we’d thought we’d come back that way in the autumn,

So, cancelling assorted loose arrangements to meet up with various friends in Macclesfield, Marple and Stockport, on Tuesday morning we tackled the first of the Bosley Locks, turned round in the now properly watered winding hole without problems, and set course for Kidsgrove and the Cheshire Locks.

This long distance boating is nothing if not unpredictable!

Anyway, retracing our steps with a modicum of alacrity, we made our way all the way pretty much back to the junction with the Trent & Mersey Canal at Kidsgrove, moored up and hit the big Tesco store. (Having visited ICL Kidsgrove on several occasions for work reasons in the 70s and 80s, I’d never been into the town itself. What goes round…)