Narrowboat Burnt Oak: Times flies

Wheelton

Wow, time flies when you’re having fun. It seems ages ago we spent about 3 weeks near Chorley before heading back down Wigan flight. We paired with another boat for the t rip down the flight that went smoothly, mainly due to the excellent Wigan flight VLK’s who went ahead & got the locks ready for us.

Heather and the children came for a day while we were at Chorley to catch tadpoles.

We were on a mission to get to Tarleton once we got down all those Wigan locks, as we’d promised to pick the kids up from school as Heather & Jason were working. We had a lovely evening cruise to Rufford once we’d had fish & chips after the childrens swimming lessons.

Last weekend was a fantastic family gathering at Little Singleton, near Blackpool, for my little sister Samantha’s 50^th birthday. There were 19 of us during the day and 12 of us stayed in a couple of caravans. We travelled the shortest distance and almost took the longest time to get there, our planned journey time was less than an hour by train. The signal man at Rufford Station came out of his signal box to inform us the train was running a little late and I noticed cows on the line. He was aware of the cows & some chaps arrived in their hi-vis to sort it out, which took ages, but quite amusing. The train was held at a red signal outside Preston Station due to an earlier problem. The platforms at Preston Stations were packed and we were told there hadn’t been any trains to either Blackpool Stations for 4 hours. So we toddled off to the bus station and arranged for brother-in-law Paul to pick us up. Saturday we had a morning stroll along Cleveleys beach before a bit of a celebration in the evening. Louise made a fantastic huge iced fancy type birthday cake.