The trouble with getting up at 6.30 is that it makes for a very long morning, but these days a puppy rules our lives so we have to go with it! During the morning we started to prepare for our departure from the marina. We filled the water tank, did an equalisation charge on the batteries and topped them up. Just before lunchtime, Adrian drove down to Poynton Station to meet a man who was collecting the car. It’s been sold through Motorway and although their valuation turned out to be a bit high the whole thing has been done with minimum fuss and in little time.
It means we now no longer have a car at all. We never wanted to have to drag it round with us, and we couldn’t see the point of leaving it somewhere unused for months on end, so when we need a car we’ll just hire one.
We had lunch, unplugged the shoreline (and amazingly managed to coil it tightly enough that it went back into its box), and reversed out of our space. We’d picked a moment when the wind had dropped a bit, and possibly because our neighbours were out we had a bit more room to swing round. I still ended up reversing up the Marin and then swinging out into the entrance, but it was all done without touching anything — even the turn left onto the canal against the wind. We’d initially thought we’d stop on the visitor moorings right opposite the marina, but boats had arrived during the morning so we thought we’d carry on. We did just a couple of bridges, mooring on some piling between bridges 19 and 20. It’s so nice to have a view from the galley.
We’ll be staying in the area for the next couple of weeks for Macc reasons, and then we’ll be able to set off properly.
1 mile, 0 locks.