Narrowboat Serafina: Cruising Nantwich to Chester

Back to two of us again!

Having dropped off Frankie and Josh back at Nantwich on Friday after five days of cruising, Rachael and I set off for a different part of the Shropshire Union canal. We reached Barbridge around lunchtime and pulled up to the services, the water tank was pretty empty so we set up the hose and had our lunch. I came back to check the tank half an hour later with my cuppa in hand and there was still at least another 20cm to go. The tank is around 680 litres.

With the tank filled, instead of turning to head to Middlewich, as we had done several times over the last week or so, we continued straight on. Our plan; to get to Ellesmere Port, the northern termination point of the Shropshire Union canal. Our overnight stop was near Tiverton, our mooring overlooked by Beeston Castle on the hill. As we sailed out of the lock to our mooring there was Kevin and Carole from NB Dunslavin, a nice surprise! We last met on the Montgomery Canal and had a great night together, that was back in early May. After saying our hellos and grabbing a bite to eat we enjoyed a few drinks up the hill at Beeston Castle Hotel.

Our trip to Christleton was interesting. We needed to stop off at Tattenhall Marina for services and normally that wouldn't be very eventful, but Tattenhall is very open and unprotected from the wind. Most of the new marinas seem to be like this, Tattenhall being only established four years ago. I turned off the main canal to go into the marina and got blown away from the entrance, I didn't even come close! Nothing coming either way, I reversed back and gave it another go. This time heavily over steering the boat to finally be blown through the centre of the entrance. Didn't learn the first time and turned into the service area to be blown across it and had to give it another go. I was glad there was plenty of room for mistakes for my learning experience.

The run into Christleton was made very slow by several kilometres of moored boats, you could tell we were getting close to a city. Once there, Christleton turned out to be a nice little town that has been around for a very long time having been mentioned in The Doomsday Book in 1086AD. We went for an evening stroll and took a few photos after dinner, it's light here until around 10pm.

The run down into Chester was just a couple of hours with only four locks to negotiate. We left it until after 9 am to get underway and arrived just in time to have a little lunch. Our mooring in Chester is in the heart of the city, I don't know how quiet it's going to be, we plan to be here for two nights. We waited for an extra hour or so to charge the batteries then headed into the city.

Chester is an old Roman walled city full of pedestrian walk ways and very old buildings, the most obvious ones being the Tudor style. It's the first city since Stoke-on-Trent and Rachael made the most of it, mainly to the benefit of the grandchildren. Tomorrow is a sightseeing day.