Cole Mere to Ellesmere.

Travelled 2.9 miles, in a time of 1 hour.

Like with all other parts of the country yesterday was extremely wet, which had been forecast, so we stayed in the warm and dry. The rain does not bother either of us, but why get wet for the sake of it? But it did not stop the contractors cutting the grass and strimming the edges. So rain does not stop everything. The rain got heavier throughout the day and some very soggy boaters came past us every now and again, it has to be said many of them were on hire boats.

This morning it began with light rain and the sky did look full of rain. So for a we waited to see what it was going to do, with the rain settling to a spit spot here and there we set off from our mooring at 9.40am.

But having started off the rain returned and got heavier and heavier.

Our short journey took us past Blake Mere, which we will stop at and explore on our return journey.

We then travelled through the 87 yard narrow Ellesmere Tunnel.

It was very shallow, so we struggled a little. On coming out of the tunnel the rain was lashing down now.

On arriving at Ellesmere we ventured up the arm, winding was a little tight, so I got the pole out to help the bow round.

I did remember the arm from 6 years ago, but since then work has taken place and one notable addition is the new Tesco store.

There was not many mooring places, in fact only one possible place for us to get into and we did attempt to moor up, but it was too shallow, so we initially moored up on the Whitchurch side of the junction, doing a swap for places with Les & Jacqueline on Nb Valerie, who very kindly offered to let us moor in their place and they would moor where we had tried, which was lovely of them.

Having moored up, we chatted for a while with some other boaters, who bought some Brasso from me, they suggested we may like to move in behind them because boats do tend to get hit by other boats missing the turn, so we moved away from the junction to opposite the BW maintenance yard. The likelihood of being rammed by boats manoeuvring at the junction is quite high, especially with the weekend approaching. Very much like Foxton junction.

With us now safely moored up behind NB Rose, I made us some soup for lunch.

Lunch was then followed by a shopping trip to the new Tescos alongside the end of arm, which is fantastically handy. We spent an hour shopping, before walking back to the boat in the rain. Thankfully the heavy stuff waited until we were on the boat in the warm. We are going to stay here for a few days so we can take in all Ellesmere has to offer.