We took the opportunity of moving the car today to Swanley Bridge Marina where we have booked in for a few days after our return from the Lancaster and, hopefully, passage through the mostly closed Poolstock Locks.
Mike set off around 10:15 and drove back down to the M6 and then to Junction 16 where he turned off onto the A500 to bypass Nantwich and arrive at the marina. Apart from the expected slow sections of road works, he arrived onto the Nantwich bypass only two minutes behind the original ETA. However he then unexpectedly found himself joining what turned out to be a rather long queue of traffic held up by temporary traffic lights of some new road works. Luckily he had left time for such eventualities but by the time he had checked in at the marina office, parked the car and walked to the entrance gate, he had only a few minutes before the taxi was due. As he was texting Christine an update on his position he spotted the taxi coming down the long farm drive to the marina.
Once again it is good to report that Haightons Private Hire, based in Nantwich, provided an excellent service. They dropped Mike outside the station with plenty of time to pick up a sandwich for lunch on the train - even long enough to drink a cup of latte!
The train was a few minutes late - eventually arriving into Preston 7 overdue but as the service from there to Rufford is only one an hour, there was almost half an hour schedule changeover.
The short local train from Preston to Ormskirk trundled its way down to Rufford, dropping Mike off right on schedule! It was only a couple of minutes walk from there to the boat where Christine already had the kettle boiling.
Whilst the shuffle was in progress, Christine took time to clean over inside the boat - we did so before leaving it so it was a bit of a surprise to see how much had collected in our month's absence. Later she also gave the windows a good wipe over.
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