“Don’t Worry, Be Happy!”

On Wednesday we took the train from Nantwich to Macclesfield to attend the funeral of Elaine McBride. Having met Paul and Elaine for the first time some years ago on a River Thames tideway cruising outing, we never thought that we would be meeting up with so many of their friends and family on such a sad occasion.

As we heard from Paul’s tribute to Elaine during the service, she was a bright, vivacious and deeply caring human being and, although taken from this life so soon, her life was wonderfully and beautifully lived. The very moving service, approved and planned by Elaine herself, ended with her message to all of us in the the song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”. God Bless you Elaine!

Returning from Macclesfield we needed a very speedy wash and brush up on “Chance” before taking the train to Manchester to meet up with friend Donroy for dinner.

We also had the pleasure of meeting Roy, a long term family friend of Donroy and his husband Will where we all had a marvellous Thai meal at Vivid Lounge in Piccadilly Village.

We spent the night, and much of Thursday, in Manchester before training it back to Nantwich where we began an evening cruise onto the Llangollen Canal.

Evening cruising is not the norm for us but we really enjoyed the last hours of the day. Here we are at the foot of the Hurleston flight of locks which took us up the 34 feet onto the Llangollen.

If we didn’t know which way to go the signs are clear enough!

It’s soon apparent as you start cruising that the canal takes about 10% of the flow of the River Dee up at Llangollen to feed Chester’s water requirements and the flow against us makes the bridge ‘oles a bit dodgy to get through sometimes. However, it certainly doesn’t detract from the canal’s lovely tranquil surroundings.

As the light began to fade we worked our first two locks at Swanley …….

……. after which the three locks at Baddiley required headlights!

Once through Baddiley locks we thought we ought to soon moor up for the night! Our tiny, but incredibly bright, LED headlights did their job well for the last half hour of the journey and had got us to where we wanted to be.

On Friday, after a very quiet and dark night in the heart of the countryside, we made the short hop to Wrenbury where we’d planned to meet up with friends Paul and Chris who were on holiday in the area. We had a nice pub lunch in the Cotton Arms before returning to “Chance” for coffee and drinks. Paul and Doug are the ‘clowns’ as you can see!!!!!!

Chris, James, Doug and Paul. Thanks guys for travelling to see us we had a great day with you (and thanks also to our blog readers and fellow boaters on nb “3 No Trumps” for coming to say Hello!).