Our arrangement for the next week is to moor in Scarisbrick Marina with Christine on board whilst Mike travels to York tomorrow for five days of meetings. This will at least mean that all the services are available and Christine will not have to worry about keeping the batteries charged. We had been asked to arrive by 3pm so that we could complete the paperwork.
To meet this schedule, Mike made and early start to relocate the car, leaving the boat soon after 7.30. He called at Morrisons for a paper before continuing up the road to Halsall, where we left the car on our way in, except this time he used a space at the bridge before.
He walked back to the main road but, as there was some doubt about whether the buses stopped at the end of the road, he continued into the centre of the village where is was certain of a stop. A\s he had managed to leave earlier than he planned yesterday, he had not properly checked the timetable - and fell foul of the same problem as last time,. that is that at certain hours there is only one bus not the half hourly service. So the 8.37 service he had expected did not arrive and he had to wait until 9:07! This early he also had to pay for his ticket rather than being able to rely on his bus pass . . .
In any event, it arrived on schedule and dropped him at the end of the road up to the canal from where it was a ten minute walk to the boat.
We quickly set off on what was, until late afternoon, a splendid sunny day - sun cream was needed.
It was not far to the first of the four swing bridges in Maghull and so Christine walked on to set it ready. Mike was a bit non plussed to see a boat on the bridge landing and as he neared there was waving from Christine who made it clear that he was not going through any time soon!
The control panel was displaying a message that operation was not available (the screen acts better as a mirror than an information panel!) and the other boat had already contacted CaRT who promised attendance within the hour. A local indicated that this is not an uncommon problem at the moment.
Two staff did arrive, a bit over the hour but quickly reset the system and opened the bridge to pu let us both through. Overall we lost perhaps 40 minutes so it could have been a lot worse.
The other boat pulled in before the next bridge as they wanted to visit Morrisons, which is very close. This bridge manually operated and only for pedestrians. It moves very smoothly requiring only a gentle nudge to keep moving. After very different experiences on other parts of this canal in the past, it is good to report that the two manual footbridges (the other at Litherland) are so well maintained.
The fourth bridge has automatic barriers but does have to be pushed by hand. after a heave to set it moving it, for a road bridge, is remarkably easy to operate. All of these bridges have now been modified so that they can be operated by single handed boaters.
The rest of today's journey was out in the countryside, broken only by Bridge 20, the one which had been badly damaged earlier in the season, which is what had determined our schedule for these couple of weeks. As it happened, it is now fully repaired and it would not be remarkable if you did not know the background. It is only a farm accommodation bridge so rarely do boaters hold up traffic, only the occasional tractor.
We continued northwards until we reached the place where Mike had left the car earlier this morning. He jumped (literally) off the boat as Christine steered (non stop) through the bridge hole, taking the car to the marina.
Once parked he walked back along the towpath to meet the boat arriving and we then turned into the marina and set about finding our mooring. As it happened, unexpectedly the Manager was not on site and would not be back until late afternoon. One of the staff gave us a pontoon to moor at for now but we said that we did not mind moving later if necessary. Our main concern was to have a key fob so that we could exit the car park in the morning in time for Mike to catch his train at Burscough Bridge.
Daniel did return around five and realised that we did need to move - it was simpler to do it straight away. The wind had dropped so it was quite uneventful - driving a boat in a marina can sometimes be an unnerving experience as winds race across open water.
8.1 Miles - 0 Locks
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