Plan B

Things do not always work out as you plan them. When you travel on the canals in England, you rent the boat and go where you want to. We choose a particular boat that we liked the layout of and we decided to do a route called “the Four Counties” ring. This route matched the time we had the boat for and seemed to have a nice mix of scenery. We felt we could do the 100 miles comfortably in the 14 days we had the boat.

However . . . . .

Anderton Boat Lift

Arriving at Andertion, the town where we were to pick up the boat, we decided to locate the Marina and have a look at the Andreton Boat lift, a historical hydraulic machine that lifted boats fifty feet from the river up to the canal. When we stopped at the boat rental office and started discussing our route with the girl in the office she told us that the “four counties” could not be done as a loop because of a “Stoppage” half way around. You could still do section of the route, but no boats were getting all the way around.

Time to look at Plan B Over a Beer

This was a shame, because Margaret (My sister) and I had carefully charted how long we would travel each day, how many locks we would have to use, and the choice of pubs we could visit along the way.

So, all that is out the window and we will have to move to plan B. A look at our options showed that there was another “ring” route that we could take from the same marina. It was a little shorter and went through a more urban area (Right through the centre of Manchester), but we could take our time and perhaps stop more often.

It does have a series of locks that is nick-named “Heartbreak Hill”, because there are 27 locks in a row. That sounds like an adventure, and we may have time to actually go through the Anderton Boat Lift.