Telford's Warehouse

It's a pub now but still has the covered loading dock. Eight locks today and I let Calum do all of them. In fairness, we had lock keepers helping on seven. One guy covers four locks, which are spaced out, and cycles between them - riding ahead to set the next lock as we finished one. He's been doing it for 20 years and has been featured on the local news. The other keeper was looking after the staircase of three locks; the opportunities for inexperienced boaters to get in a mess are bountiful. As we entered to top lock he asked Cal to hold one of the gates open so that he could bleed water down to a lower lock, the boat coming up had emptied it which meant that we'd have been short of water. The locks share gates, the bottom gates of one lock are the top gates of another, so boats can pass in the staircase while going in different directions; I passed two boats going up as we went down. Narrowboats going down broad locks tend to go diagonally across the lock as the water runs out - in both cases I had to shuffle about to clear the other boat.

We're planning on staying here for two nights, we'll have a mosey around Chester tomorrow. I've not been since I was a child and it's Cal's first visit.