Wednesday 25 September 2013

Lyme Green to Congleton

We needed to be in Congleton today for a long standing appointment so that meant we had to make up the time spent on our detour to Bugsworth Basin.

On Monday we had a long day cruising, setting off at 9am with the intention of mooring, yet again, at Gurnett Aqueduct. Unfortunately by the time we'd filled with water at Macclesfield all the moorings at Gurnett were full so we had to carry on to Lyme Green.

Yesterday we continued our journey and arrived at Bosley Locks after lunch.

The service block beside the top lock was being fitted with solar panels. The normal position on buildings is on the south face but for some strange reason these were being installed on 2 sides of the roof, east and west.


Maybe C&RT would have been better off spending the money repairing the approach to the pump-out as the bank has fallen in. You can see from the post in the water just how big the obstruction is.


The sun shone all afternoon and we had a good trip down the locks. All bar one were set against us and we didn't meet any boats coming up.


Less than 2 hours later we moored on the visitor moorings which were very busy and I went off to pick damsons from the trees beside lock 11.


There were lots of elderberries about as well as a few blackberries so I picked an assortment and made mixed fruit jelly.


I haven't used elderberries before but they're really easy to strip from their stalks and gave a lot of juice when simmered with the damsons and blackberries.



Damsons are full of pectin so the final jelly set really quickly and the 3 fruits went well together. It's inspired me to experiment with other fruit mixtures. I'm now on the look-out for a decent crab apple tree as I want to make some apple and chilli jelly next.

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