Weaver: Middlewich -> Nantwich (via IWA lock wind at Cholmondeston) 5-8/8/2021

Start: Middlewich

End: Nantwich via IWA lockwind

Miles: 13

Locks: 3

Lock miles: 16

Engine hours: 652.1 start / 660ish end

Fairly leisurely start on Thursday morning as we only needed to get to the Cholmondeston visitor moorings near Venetian Marina where we were due to help with a lock wind for our Inland Waterways Association (IWA) branch. It's an annual fund raiser where we work the lock for boaters and encourage them to give a donation or buy stuff from our stall. The 2020 event was cancelled due to Covid-19 so it was good that this year's could take place.

The weather was not great and we got wet a few times but this has the upside of making boaters feel sorry for us and giving more money!

We try to have a BBQ on the evening before the lock wind but the weather did not cooperate. But we did have a nice meal at the Barbridge Inn on the Saturday evening - we walked there and the rest drove (but we beat them there!).

It was part of our retirement plans to get a bigger boat so we could go on longer cruises. Mind Like Water is basically a single room floating caravan which is fine for the 2 week cruise that we could manage while working but less practical for longer cruises (i.e. 2-3 months) that we plan to do after retirement. Andrew retired from lecturing in August 2021 and Alison will retire from the GMB union in early March 2022.

So… As we were doing this lock wind near Venetian Marina where we bought Mind Like Water, we though we could go and have a look at what they had on sale - just to start gathering information about what is around of course…

Anyway… a chap from Venetian came to look at Mind Like Water and we went to look at two boats. One was a bit too long at 60ft and also had a rather poor internal fitout done by the previous owner. But the other one was quite nice and reasonably priced. When Venetian then offered us more for Mind Like Water than we had paid for her 7 years ago, we decided to make an offer on the other boat - Ganzee.

The survey came back with no nasty surprises and less than a month after the lock wind we now own the new boat! We will be renaming her to Vegvisir (the Icelandic / Viking compass symbol which means Way Seer or Path Finder). Logs of our time on her will be on a new blog page at https://nbvegvisir.blogspot.com/.

We had a reasonable journey back to base on Mind Like Water though the weather turned and Andrew got very cold and wet by the time we were moored up.