Ellesmere to Frankton Junction.

Travelled 3.15 miles in a time of 1 hour 20 minutes.

Wow today's weather was such a contrast to the weather we had yesterday. Gone was the lashing rain and strong winds and it was replaced by sunshine and a breeze, even Paddy was excited about going for his morning walk. I think he had visions of a nice dry walk, but he still got wet paws.

Our first port of call before setting off was to move over to the Sanitary Station, to take on water, empty both toilet cassettes, because they were now both full, we also had three bags of rubbish and a couple of empty boxes to get rid of, so the complete package. Actually getting over to the other side was more difficult than it should have been, with it being a little shallow Hadar was finding it difficult and this was compounded with boats wanting to come past us, so no sooner we got into the centre of the canal and in a good position to reverse on to the station moorings, another boat would want to come past, eventually we made it though and had the station and had one of the four water taps to ourselves. Keith emptied the cassettes, whilst I connected the hosepipe to the tap and began the tank refill. He then got rid of the rubbish and as he did so two boats joined us on the station and attached their hose pipes to the other tap.

With three of us now filling our tanks the water pressure had gone from fantastic to almost nothing, so it seemed to take forever to fill the tank, it in fact took over an hour, no sooner the middle boat turned his tap off we had full flow again and finally we were all filled up for another two weeks or until we wanted to take advantage of another water tap.

Whilst waiting for the water tank to fill, I watched the Sparrows going in and out of the gaps in the timber work on the dry dock. Sparrows are so over looked because they are little brown birds, but they are very sweet and always have something to say.

10am and we were all done and ready for the off in front of two other boats.

I had thought it may have been better to let them go, but that proved not to be the case, because once we got away we left them someway behind us and we were going fast. We were once again out into the countryside, which is very rural and quiet.

Fields and farms was the order of the day, plus the twists and turns of the canal, which was where we met most of the boats coming towards us. We had a slight bump with hire boat, who was not concentrating, but no harm done.

11.20am we arrived at Frankton Junction, Montgomery Canal and moored up just past bridge 70 Rowsons Bridge. We locked the boat up and walked down to the Montgomery Locks, to see if the lock keeper was there. We were told by a boater moored up to go down, he does not arrive until 11.45am. Keith wanted to ask about depth on the canal, because we want to do the Montgomery on our return journey. 11.45am on the dot, Mr BW man arrived and told us we would be fine, there was no problem with depth on the Monty, so we will definitely be going down when we return, we just have to book in before 10am the day before we want to go down. There were five boats waiting to go down and a hire boat waiting to come up, so it is beginning to get busy on the Monty.

After some lunch, Keith, Paddy and I walked down some of the Montgomery, the last time we did it was six years ago.

We had some spectators.

The Graham Palmer stone is beginning to look a little sad, as the face on the stone is falling away, when we walked past it six years ago, Paddy got scared and just kept barking at it, this time he did not bat an eyelid, he just walked past it as if it were not there. The Montgomery looks incredibly tranquil and beautiful, so I am looking forward to us doing it in the coming weeks. I will post more about it when we actually do it, that will give you something to look forward too.

Paddy really enjoyed his 2 mile walk, but was almost out on his feet by the time we got back to the boat. His age is beginning to tell now.

Whilst Keith settled down in front of his computer, I went out and collected a bucket of sticks for the back cabin stove, which I will use tonight to dampen the fire down before bed, in the mean time I have Hunters Chicken cooking in the oven for dinner. The weather has stayed nice, with a keen breeze, we are expecting showers tomorrow.