Friday 12^th July; Chester to somewhere before bridge 110

It was dry to start with, but there was stuff to do before we left.  First I walked Jess down to the services in the basin below Northgate locks. 

King Charles Tower peeps through the trees

Services?  Pah!  There was a water tap but I wasn’t looking for that.  I crossed the footbridge by the dry dock to the blue CRT sign, but there was no rubbish disposal and the toilet, shower etc were locked and ‘out of order’.  Looking back at Waterway Routes now, I see there is a bin on the offside at the top of the Northgate staircase but I didn’t spot it from the towpath.  Oh well.  

The Lock Keeper where we ate last night

Moored in Chester

Then Dave took Jess out again while I went shopping.  I took the long way round to Tesco via the city walls, dropping down at Northgate street to find a nice greengrocer for some Cheshire new potatoes, new season English apples and local strawberries, before walking on to Tesco for the other fresh stuff we needed.

Unusual pub frontage

Lots of half-timbered buildings

I got back with my bags to find Dave had winded the boat and we were pointing the right way to leave.  It was almost 11 before we got going, all on our own and no-one to share with.  It’s always nice to see the old factories restored rather than demolished.

Steam Mill, now offices

The famous 168-foot tall Grade II shot tower had to be photographed of course.  It was part of the now disused Chester Leadworks.  Wikipedia tells us that molten lead was poured through a pierced copper plate or sieve at the top of the tower, with the droplets forming perfect spheres by surface tension during the fall; the spherical drops were then cooled in a vat of water at the base.  An early use for the lead shot was ammunition for muskets in the Napoleonic Wars.  The tower was in use till 2001.

Shame about the delivery van

Gradually we got closer to the other tower along the canal.  This is the Grade II listed Boughton Water Tower, Boiler House and Railings at Boughton Water Pumping Station.

The site was listed as recently as 2006.  There is an interesting comment on the Historic England website from the engineer who originally got it listed – when he visited with a party of colleagues, the site engineer told him that the council, who owned the site, wanted to demolish it and build houses.  The works was the first in the world to use settling lagoons as part of water treatment, bud sadly they had already been filled in.

Probably Chemistry lock

There was a sharp shower as we rose up Chemistry lock, and then another at Christleton lock, the top one.  The second shower was very heavy and didn’t abate, so we moored as soon as we could and had lunch.

The glorious blue of Viper’s Bugloss between Chemistry and Christleton locks

It had taken us two hours from our mooring; all the locks had been empty and we met boats at two of them, but going up double locks on your own always takes longer than when you’ve got a partner, as you must raise paddles slowly to minimise the way the incoming water will push your boat around.  The single-hander we met gave us a valuable tip – keep your boat as close to the back gates as you can, and tie it up on the centre line.  We found this worked really well to keep the boat under control.

We checked the weather forecast and saw a relatively dry window of a couple of hours during the afternoon, so as soon as the rain stopped we set off again, aiming to get past Golden Nook before we moored for the night.  We timed our passage past the long line of moored boats on my sports watch.

Exactly

Someone told us they reckoned passing the moorings on tickover added an hour to cruising times.  Well that’s rubbish, though it may well feel like that!  It took us just over 32 minutes to pass the 1.26 miles of moorings so it’s probably more likely to be 15 minutes. 

Fishing at the end of the moorings

It’s been very quiet boat-wise today.  We saw only two on the move this afternoon, one chasing us from Tattenhall marina wanting to share the upcoming locks  – sadly for him, we were looking for somewhere to moor by then so he rushed on by himself.  The rain started soon after we moored and continued all evening.

8 miles, 5 locks