Sunny Saturday

Saturday dawned bright and sunny and far too early after our Friday night out. The Irish Night in the Roaches Lock pub was good but it wasn't very Irish at all. It's a niceThwaites's pub, very popular with the locals and the food looked reasonable. They have free live entertainment on every other Friday and last night it was the turn of Tracy Gee, billed as 'the girl with the fiddle'. We were expecting Irish music as it was supposed to be a St. Patrick's celebration night with special offers on the Guinness, Jamesons whiskey & Thwaites Nutty Black mild (highly recommended) however Tracy Gee played an electric fiddle and sang everything from Adele to Led Zeppelin. She was surprisingly good and the Irish bit came later when a troupe of little girls from the local dance academy arrived to perform some Irish dances. We got back to a very frosty boat at around midnight, it was minus 2'C.
Sometime since we'd gone out at 8pm a boat had arrived and moored up right behind us. They must have been cruising in the dark but we can't find out as there's no sign of life. Maybe they just moored up and left it!

Because the weather has been so beautiful again we decided not to carry on cruising but to go for a walk instead. We left Charlie asleep on the boat and took Chico up through the country park, around Mossley town then along the footpaths up into the hills to Greenfield where we found the new Frenches Wharf Marina complete with a Tesco and the Kingfisher pub next door. We've booked in for Monday and Tuesday nights as it's the only moorings in the area with reasonable access to the station for my visit back to the house in  Manchester. The views along the way were pretty spectacular and we're looking forward to the cruise up to the marina on Monday, although the canal itself is EXTREMELY shallow and we have been warned by one of the locals to watch out for a patch of silting just before one of the locks. According the Roger's phone's pedometer app. we walked for 5.53 miles, Chico came in ate his tea and went straight to bed!

Abandoned duck eggs at the canal edge