Astley Green to Wigan.

A cool day weather-wise. But with the sun out and Paddy needing his morning walk, I gathered up my camera and head out to walk through the wood above our boat.

There was a lovely view of the coal mine gear.

There is a railway which runs alongside the wood, which is used by the mine still.

We left our over night mooring and set off in a freshing breeze. The sun began to disappear and so the temperature dropped. Both of us were wrapped up in our Donkey jackets against the bitting breeze.

We had a couple of locks to do on the Leigh Branch and oh boy I found them hard to work. It was mainly problems with moving the bottom gates. I reckon old age is creeping ever closer or they are just hard work.

We got to Wigan and moored between the 2 locks 86 & 87, and had some lunch.

After lunch, I got our rucksacks out and we then set off to book our passage into Liverpool and to do a food shop at Asda. We met Vicky at the CRT office who booked our passage for this coming Friday and our return a week later. We are now both looking forward very much to the journey, knowing we can actually get through. It is true to say I am extremely excited. We returned from Asda’s with 2 rather full rucksacks of food to find Hadar was listing at a jaunty angle, the water level of pound between the 2 locks had gone down and she was sitting on the bottom, so we decided to move below Bottom lock, to Wigan Pier. With the wind now blowing up a gale and with sleet, and snow mixed in with it, I did struggle pulling Hadar into the mooring, but got there eventually.

This is Wigan Pier, not the original, but a replacement as the original had been sold for scrap!

I am not sure how impressed I am supposed to be.