Idiots on hire boats......must be half term

Thanks to everyone who gave us suggestions for Sunday lunch in Wrenbury. In the end we opted for Saturday lunch in the Cotton Arms taking advantage of their 2 courses for £6 lunch club menu. The food was really good and I have no idea how they do it for the money. We're going to try it for Sunday lunch on the way back.

This morning there were a lot of hire boats going past so I assume it's half term again. The first 4 or 5 boats were Anglo Welsh and all passed us really slowly with no problems. The next 3 boats were from Norbury Junction and were travelling together. They were a bit different!  They were so busy chatting on their radios discussing who was making lunch and what they were having that they weren't watching where they were going and the first 2 boats ploughed into the side of us. We were moored on a straight section of canal well away from the previous lift bridge so it was pure incompetence on their part.  They moored up on the "bridge operation only" moorings before the electrically operated road bridge and had their lunch.  At least they thought they'd moored up, but when we crawled past on tick-over to go into the boat yard for a pump-out two of the boats swung out into the canal to bang into us. They'd moored up using stern ropes only!  We had quite a wait for the pump-out as the boat yard was closed for lunch so we sat and had our own lunch and watched the antics of these 3 boats as they attempted to get through Wrenbury  road bridge.  The first boat made it through alright but the second one smashed into the bridge so hard the whole structure shuddered. The woman steering thought it was hilarious. The third boat was also steered by a woman who was sitting down and obviously couldn't see where she was going as she also rammed the bridge really hard. She too was in fits of laughter and trying to steer with one hand while simultaneously trying to use the radio with her other hand to tell her friends how funny it was. The worrying thing about all this is that these 3 boats were full of young teenagers who were obviously on holiday and entrusted to the care of adults who hadn't got a clue about steering a narrowboat safely.  There was a dog walker watching their antics and he was so worried about the children he told me he was going to phone the hire company and tell them what had occurred.

Once we'd done the pump-put and filled up with water we carried on our way. We decided against topping up with diesel as it was 95p a litre and we're not desperate.  It was a beautiful afternoon for a cruise and thankfully the forecast of rain and wind was wrong. We passed Jill and Graham on n.b. Armadillo but there was no sign of life and we couldn't stop as we've got an appointment further up stream tomorrow.