Middlewich to Billinge Green Flash (Trent and Mersey Canal)

In Wardle Lock

Set off bright and early (well for us anyway!) to Wardle Lock, helped Pat and Patrick through, then it was our turn and turned left onto the Trent & Mersey canal.  We have  now left the Shropshire Union canal behind us and onto pastures new.  We have really enjoyed our time on that canal, it is really lovely and a lot of it is very rural.  On along the canal and through the next three locks, there were a couple of boats coming up, so that made life easy for us.  We stopped for water, then chugged on.   After we had filled up, we realised our water pump sounded like it was staying on, so we thought we might have a leak, so we turned the water pump off until we moored and Kev could have a look just to be on the safe side.

Middlewich Big Lock

There is the town recycling centre on the outskirts of Middlewich which is just off the canal, you walk off the tow path and right into it, so stopped off to dump our rubbish.  Then on we went to Middlewich Big Lock, this is a double lock, so we both went in together which saved time.  At the bottom of the lock there are plenty of visitor moorings, but we chugged on, this part of the canal is very windy and quite narrow in places with lots of reeds on the sides of the canal. 

Billinge Green Flash

We were looking for somewhere to moor, but a lot of places was not possible  so we carried on until we came to a wide expanse of water with several boats moored, it is called Billinge Green Flash.  It is a privately owned lagoon caused by subsidence on this section of the Trent & Mersey canal.  We moored up here, it is really lovely, open and sunny with Canadian Geese and ducks swimming around.  Kev  investigated the water pump, but couldn’t find a leak, so gave the pump a good clean as it was abit gunked up, put it back together and it worked okay again, thank goodness, but when we get to a chandlers, we will get some spare parts in case it happens again.

Chilled out for the rest of the day.  We had a few drops of rain in the afternoon, but then the sun came out and it was a really lovely evening.  Staying here tomorrow as well as we have moved every day for the past few days and it will be nice to just chill out and explore the area a bit. 

Moored at Billinge Green Flash