Church Lawton - Middlewich

We had a great time in Church Lawton, lots of walks for Dudley in the nice cool woods and we even found a stream where he had another go at paddling. The weather was lovely and sunny and quite warm, I set up my workshop in the front and James had his in the usual spot on the back.

Sandra left the day before us so we helped her down the few locks to Rode Heath. We joined her the next day and popped to the Village store which was surprisingly well stocked and good bargains to be had as well. I took Dudley for a nice walk over the heath and there was so much more to explore, but we only stayed the one night before continuing our journey to Middlewich.

We  came across this lovely lake through the woods

Rode Heath

1.5 miles and 6 locks

The next day we tackled the locks down to Wheelock, known as Heartbreak Hill, and apart from it raining most of the way it was really quite enjoyable. The locks are all narrow but the majority of them are in pairs, we had a few hold ups where there was only one of the pair remaining or in use. We got a great system going with the boat ahead of us, he was setting the locks and opening the gates for us to enter and I was closing the gates when they left leaving him to continue on to get the next ones ready, we were always slightly behind as when there was only single locks we were delayed, but this made our system work really well. We continued on through Wheelock and stopped on the outskirts of Sandbach on our own in the long grass. 

5 miles and 14 locks

We continued on the next day as we had an online pen order to be posted and were miles from a Post Office. We didn't want to get into Middlewich just yet as James still had a bit of turning to do and wanted to get it done before arriving at the Festival. We stopped on the outskirts of Middlewich and I walked the couple of miles to the Post Office.

After a couple of days James was up to date and we continued into Middlewich and our reserved mooring right outside the park for the festival. 

Very complicated cycle barrier

Dudley helping 

Past the salt works

5.5 miles and 8 locks

TOTAL 253.5 miles and 242 locks