Wildlife and Weather

We’ve taken lots of photos over the missing blog months. The next few blogs will be themed and in no particular order. Today, there is a spotlight on wildlife and weather.

Fallen trees are a regular occurrence on our travels. So if we’re going to have a few days wait for the chaps to clear it, we just get on with crafting. I always have cake made to offer the lads with a brew when they do arrive to sort the stoppage.

This last winter (2025/26) was quite mild, with no significant ice. The previous winter however, saw us frozen in.

 The autumn & spring sunrises & sunsets are stunning with the colours they cast.

We are surrounded by birds every day, but some sightings are tremendous. While moored in spring at Halsall on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal we were visited each morning by a barn owl, no doubt looking to feed a hungry family.

A little dove hitched a lift.

Apart from the water birds pecking the algae off the bottom of the boat at any time of the day & night, which sounds like a hammer!! We just love them all.

And no, I didn’t have my scissors handy to snip the alpacas fleece.

Late one evening we heard a lot of splashing & scratching on the bank side of the boat. It was a hedgehog that had fallen in. Once we’d got him out & he’d caught his breath, he scooted off into the hedge.

The moon also fascinates us.

Finally, we’ve never managed to get to that pot of gold.

Old news - a 2024 missed out blog

    

 Christmas 2023 the kids brought us a Manchester Ship Canal (MSC) cruise, which we booked for September 2024. We left the boat near Foxton, in the midlands to have the blacking on it’s bottom checked and headed to Liverpool on the train.

It was a fine but breezy day for our trip. We picked up Mersey Ferry ‘Snowdrop’ at Pier head, Liverpool. The River Mersey was a bit choppy.

The sea lock at Eastham on the Wirral was huge. The MSC is still used for some freight & we saw some ships docked and passed one.

There is just a small wall that separates the MSC.

It looked like the ferry wouldn’t actually get under some of the bridges, but it did.

We have been over the Barton swinging aqueduct and walked over some of the swing bridges too. It was quite something to see the swing bridges opening for us.

 

 

We treated ourselves to a ship’s dinner of scouse.

Foxton has a heritage community orchard, so we took the opportunity to pick some rare apple varieties.

On our travels along the North Oxford Canal we passed the repairs of a massive land slip that closed the canal the winter of 2023. The sign asks boats go past the repairs at tick-over, which we did, and another narrow boat promptly overtook us!

Some community wall art through Stoke-on-Trent

And, we knew autumn had arrived.

Couldn't imagine doing this job – the chaps were re-puddling a lock overflow.

2026 and we’re off

     We are pretty excited about setting off & leaving the familiar Ainscough Mill behind for a while.

 

We are going to have to take a longer route out of west Lancashire, as the Bridgwater Canal breach of January 2025 is still not repaired. The Bridgewater Canal isn’t managed by Canal & River Trust (CRT), but a private company. They have said it should be repaired by the end of this year. Our alternate route takes in a lot of locks through the centre of Manchester. Whereas the Bridgewater skirts around the city & doesn’t have any locks along it at all.

We stocked up at Tesco and filled just about every receptacle we had with water ready for some journeying.

A friend, is tagging along for the first leg of our journey along the Leeds & Liverpool Canal, around the bottom of Wigan to get to the Leigh Branch. It’s so much easier having two boats in the double locks, plus it saves water too. We have really missed the exertion of doing locks since last year.

After we moored up on our second day of travelling, John was putting the back cover up & noticed a tiny squirrel on the waterside gunwale. The little chap jumped into the canal when he spotted John. So, John got a stick & coax him onto to it. We spotted him later in the day, looking all fluffy again once he’d dried out.

Once indoors after the rescue we had an e-mail from CRT, saying there was a problem with a cill in one of the locks on the Ashton Canal, the other side of Manchester. Broken cills often take a good while to fix and they will let us have more information in about 10 days time.

We will stay on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal until we have more information on the Ashton stoppage. Once we pass though Leigh we’ll be on the Bridgewater Canal (the private one) and we are only allowed (with our CRT licence) 7 nights & no return within 28 days on there.

Time for a bit of spring cleaning, exploring the area around Crooke & knitting I guess.

Crooke was a mining village with a system of underground canals to access the coal seams. The basin is now a private marina.

It is so hard to imagine what a bustling place it would have been and how filthy with all the industries belching out smoke. We strolled up above the village, through what is now gorgeous woods. The carpet of bluebells looked & smelt amazing.

The area has lots of capped mines, but this one looks as if it’s really misbehaving, with it’s huge fence & pile of stones. We looked up which pit it was and it was John’s Pit Colliery.

Now a bit of recent catch up now.

We had crew for a weekend, so a stroll up to Fairy Glen, Appley Bridge was called for. It is always beautiful, especially in the spring. The bluebells were just starting to come into flower. A friend had said about pickling wild garlic buds, as they are like pickled onions. So as well as leaves, I picked a few buds too.

After our stroll up the glen we checked everything on the roof was secure and the 2 extra mooring lines we’d put on when we moored were OK & awaited storm Dave to arrive. 

We always try moor away from trees when strong winds are forecast. We were just able to squeeze past this fallen tree the following day.

February we had a 2 week holiday in Port Erin, Isle of Man. The cottage was gorgeous and in a super spot over looking the bay & harbour.

The locals did rather stare through the window at us though.

We had some very wild weather while we were there. The huge waves at Douglas were phenomenal. Consequently, no boats or ferries were able to dock, which meant the super market looked like ‘old mother Hubbard’s cupboard!!