Seems that as well as the boat gathering, the local folk club had organised a session on Saturday afternoon outside the community cafe at the mill, and a boating songs/shanty session inside on Saturday evening, at which another well known folky and boater Tom Lewis would be singing and the ex canal laureate Jo Bell would be reading her poems. We’d seen Tom recently, and he was excellent, and we’d also spotted his boat moored up, so that wasn’t a surprise. Hence the plan was to try and stay another night locally, presupposing we could get moored somewhere reasonably close. We’d kindly been offered a spot breasted up against another boat, but that one really wouldn’t have been suitable for the Captain to go out in the dark.

Well, we were up at OMG o’clock, showered, breakfasted and ready to roll at 08:00 – no mean feat after a late night – but there was no sign of any CaRT people coming to move their work boat. We eventually decided to move anyway at about 09:15, and as we were casting off saw a posse of CaRT volunteers crossing the bridge. If we’d known, we could have had another hour or more in bed. Mutter, mutter.

Anyway, we found some very nice moorings about half a mile down the cut, in nice countryside, so all was well.

We dropped in on the afternoon session – that’s Charlotte chatting to the head cook rather than playing her fiddle, and Jason on her left.

Bollington is an interesting hill town, with a real community spirit, and seems to be known locally as Happy Valley. The aqueduct looks much more impressive from below than it does above, the church has a fine example of one of those octagonal spires that seem to crop up around hereabouts, there’s a decent large Co-Op, a super delicatessen, a frequent bus service to Macclesfield, and plenty of yummy mummies and daddies wheeling their progeny around. Surrounded by lovely views of the peak district, we could see why it was popular.

We were a bit puzzled by the house name and wondered what someone had done to deserve that (click on the picture if you can’t read it). And climbing back up to the canal, we took our eyes off the view just long enough to decide that the music score on Punchinello was either by a signwriter who’d just sprayed random musical typography across the stave, or it was a ditty knocked up by Karlheinz Stockhausen on an off day. (Our standards here are high: very early on in Song & Dance’s travels we passed a boat Baker Street, where the side of the boat was correctly decorated with the music for that saxophone break’. We were impressed).

We wandered back for the evening do; the place was mobbed, and the event would have been excellent apart from the fact that the air-conditioning was going full blast – like a Lightning with it’s after burners lit, making it difficult to hear well. Tom Lewis was expectedly good, and – not being poetry fans – Jo Bell was unexpectedly superb. Another late night. And back home quite a long way down a dark towpath: haven’t done much of that for a while. Winter drawers on: must remember a torch next time!

As we set off from Bosley to Bollington (that phrase has a From Galway to Gracelands ring about it, doesn’t it?), as already mentioned the first obstacle is the Bosley flight of locks. One odd thing is that – unlike most other locks – the top ends have two mitred gates like those commonly found at the the bottom, rather than the more usual single gate. And there’s no walkway on the top gates, so if you’re light crewed like Song & Dance there’s a lot more walking around the lock chamber to work the boat through. They’re also deep, so the paddles are often stiff, and the gates leak like a sieve, so even if someone had just come down leaving a lock in your favour it didn’t stay that way for long.

So – remembering to hate people who start sentences with “so” – with uninspiring weather and no time for much else, we headed off without camera in hand, and made it to the top by lunchtime rather out of breath. There’s a bit of a gap between the penultimate and ultimate lock, and we saw our friend Betelgeuse and tug stuffed in the reeds and undergrowth. Guess that’s as far as they got before running out of daylight or post work enthusiasm or lockwheeling helpers.

The top lock is something of a CaRT visitor/showcase spot. The gates are all freshly painted, and properly balanced to move easily, the paddles are all greased and easy to operate, and the gates didn’t leak. I guess most visitors don’t walk down to see how decrepit the others locks are. Cynical? Moi?

After lunch, we didn’t go a great deal further, and stopped at the visitor moorings at Gurnett Aqueduct. These look nice and suitable, but the rings are set far too far apart, and the cut there being a concrete trough, banging mooring pins in without running ropes crossing the towpath can be entertaining. Not.

A fellow boater had suggested that Sutton Hall was a good place to eat, and so it proved. An old manor house, convent and one time home of Lord Lucan, it’s now a large pub/restaurant with loads of different rooms, nooks and crannies, and excellent food. The entrance is just off the canal, and approached by quite a long winding drive between two large fields full of sheep.

After a splendid meal, we were walking back down the drive in the dark, wondering what the strange subterranean rumbling sounds that we could hear were coming from. Shining a torch into the field showed several sheep close by the fence, lying on their sides, fast asleep, and to a ewe, snoring gently. Never knew sheep snored: reckon there’s an idea for a Bach Cantata there…

We knew Charlotte, a morris dancer friend of the head gardener, had come oop North to do a boat signwriting course. She liked it so much she stayed, and was apparently living with her partner Jason on a boat on the Caldon Canal. Not far as the crow flies from the Macclesfield Canal, messages about Biggles’ progress had been despatched.

A couple of times over the last few days we’d seen passed the butty Betelgeuse and her tug (who shall apparently remain nameless until a repaint) moored breasted up,  and then passing us late in the day. Setting off late on Wednesday morning after the fog lifted from our mooring at Ramsdell, we passed them once again, heading for Congleton.

The canal here consists of long straight sections (no pansy contouring here) and the frequent bridges have an odd elliptical shape, rather than finishing vertically at ground level, like almost everywhere else. They have a narrow channel, and most have a significant ledge on the non-towpath side just at water level, almost invariably hidden by the undergrowth. This makes them an interesting challenge to pass without hitting anything too hard.

The canal takes a dog-leg route of several long straight sections around Congleton,  bypassing the town centre by more than a mile. But it goes right by the station (actually, pretty much under the station), where there is a decent pub for a lunchtime Guinness, and a convenience store for milk. So by the time we reached the much regarded moorings just below Bosley bottom lock, it was late afternoon. And warm and sunny. With a nice view. So all things considered, we decided to leave tackling the Bosley Lock flight – 12 deep locks in just over a mile, with no possibility of mooring until the top – for another day, and get the deck chairs out. It really is a nice spot, with great views over the River Dane valley, and a local hill known as The Cloud for some reason.

We’d just settled down to dinner when we saw Betelgeuse and tug passing us again, and thought “Gosh – are they really going up the Bosley Locks at this time of day with an unpowered butty? They won’t get finished before dark…”, and a minute later Charlotte stuck her head through our side hatch and said “Ah, it is you!”. Seems Betelgeuse is her and Jason’s boat/home, and they were heading for some kind of boaters meet at Bollington at the weekend. But as they were both working during the day they could only move the two boats in the evening. Turned out she actually worked at Swanley Bridge Marina, where we’d left Song & Dance to go to Sidmouth. Small world.

And with a “Can’t stop! We’ve organised a gang of lockwheelers to help, and left cars at the top of the flight… hope we’ll see you in Bollington over the weekend… there’s music and stuff…”, she was off.

Well that explains why we keep playing Betelgeuse Leapfrog, anyway!