And, in no particular order!

The Rochdale Canal is 'interesting'. We paired up with Chris aboard 'Almyne' for the climb out of Manchester and also towed a small fibreglass cruiser with a seized outboard belonging to Scott, a twelve year old who's mum Kathy and sister Kaia were following us up on her boat 'Destiny' with another boat. Her boat plus Scott's cruiser were too long for her to tow him and fit into the locks. 'Almyne' has a mini butty, a sort of floating garden shed, it's brilliant. It looks a bit like a chopped off narrow boat.

Having more people made working the locks easier but this canal is hard work. Chris kindly kept us supplied with coffee on the trip. The canal is very shallow, we felt our hull scrape the bottom a few times. Chris actually ran aground in a lock! Ray was following him into the lock at the time and because 'Almyne' suddenly stopped dead the butty jacknifed into Ray's path, Ray hit it and the tow bar broke so Chris had to do running repairs in the lock. We all got rubbish round our props which we had to clear, Chris got a sofa seat cushion, Cathy got a black leather jacket and Ray a tan suede coat. There was the usual complement of shopping trollies. On one stretch you can see where the canal was once concreted over, before it was restored. Ray got stuck in one set of lock gates where one gate wouldn't open fully and had to back off while Chris moved Almyne over in the lock so Morgana could go in through the gate that would open. At one lock we had to clear a wheelie bin from the lock entrance so we could close the gates. When we eventually reached the top we were greeted with this -

It is a floating pontoon to allow work on the railway bridge, Ray wandered up to talk to them and discovered that they were working until four, which gave us about three quarters of an hour to wait until the canal reopened. We moored up and Chris spent the time doing a proper repair to his towbar while I made sandwiches for everyone. I think we were all glad of the break. Kathy and Kaia had reached the top lock before the pontoon was moved so those two boats stayed it the lock until the canal was clear.

Waiting for the canal to re-open

We then carried on as a convoy of four boats for another couple of miles, through a lift bridge and another lock to reach some good moorings at Chadderton. We managed to cause a long traffic jam at the lift bridge while all four of us went through. According to the locals, most days they don't even see one boat and four at once is unheard of! After we had all relaxed and had dinner we took a stroll to the local pub for a couple of beers. We will probably take tomorrow off, the others are probably here until Monday but I don't know if we will stay that long. They are good travelling companions, so we might. They are heading on the same route as us until we start heading south again after crossing back across the Pennines on the Leeds and Liverpool so we will probably see them again more than once.

Today's journey 7.3 miles, 20 locks and 1 lift bridge.

So far we have travelled 263.5 miles, 260 locks, 9 swing bridges, 4 lift bridges and 6 tunnels.