Day 14 Saturday 4 October - Hassall Green to Middlewich

Today the weather forecast said rain all day & we were woken up at 06:20 by the sound of rain on the roof....so we rolled over & went back to sleep!  We eventually got up around 09:30 & it was just spitting with rain so we decided to have a quick breakfast so we could set off to make some progress towards Middlewich.

The first 2 locks of the day took us down & under the M6 motorway which was almost at a standstill, however the canal was clear & we could whiz along without any delays!

Lock 58 of T&M Canal about to go under M6

 The photo above shows Lock 58 which are another duplicate pair of locks on the Trent & Mersey Canal.  Sometimes both locks are working but often 1 of them is blocked off

Traffic at a standstill on M6

After this we went down through another 8 locks & whilst doing so got chatting to a student who was working on a project for his architecture degree at Nottingham University about the canals.  We were able to show him some of the photographs that I've been putting on the blog with bridges with rope wear & the split bridges & he ended up coming with us for a couple of locks so he could "experience the canal", hopefully we've managed to pass on some useful information to him.After we dropped him off we continued until we reached the water point where we pulled over to re-fill our water & by this time the sun was shining & it's continued to be sunny all day although the wind has picked up considerably.  The next stretch was about 2.5 miles on the flat before the 3 Booth Lane Locks before we saw this massive British Salt works,  Much of the freight traffic along the T&M Canal would have either been salt or goods to or from the Potteries.

British Salt works close to T&M canal

Huge piles of salt by T&M canal

Our goal today was to reach Middlewich ready to meet up with my Brother & his family for lunch tomorrow & with the weather forecast being so grim we weren't sure if we'd make it but we have & we have been through the Middlewich junction so are now on the Shropshire Union Canal, Middlewich Branch.  We are not planning on boating at all tomorrow.

Today we have boated for 6 hours through 16 locks.