Saturday 3rd November

We set out from York as early as we could manage having to stop off to stock up on food for our week and buy a few fireworks for Monday. This always takes longer than you want it to, then the M62 was slow with its management work going on and became slower as we reached Manchester. So we decided to head onto the A580 to try to get to Elton Moss a little bit quicker.
On arriving at Elton Moss the new gate procedures were in operation, they had had a visit from some nare do wells a couple of weeks ago so the gate is now locked with a combination lock from the inside. This was far easier for me to do than the old high tech screw driver shoved through the hasp. But the gates are still hard to push and pull, but we got there in the end.
Ken and James were around finishing off the turn arounds. Their Movember moustaches starting to show! Luckily they had already completed WD so we unloaded, checked the handover form, no new faults, so we were off at 2.30pm. This was a bit later than we'd hoped for but still gave us a few hours before the sun was going to set.
We headed south towards Wheelock (thank you Howard for leaving it facing South). On our week at Christmas last year we only managed to get to Wheelock before the light faded and we were hoping to get that bit further on this occasion  Pootleing along I  made us a sandwich each and opened up the chocolate banana cake with a cuppa. At Locks 66 I jumped off and found the right hand lock half full and the left one empty so opened it up which gave Mick a bit of tricksy manoeuvring to get into it. I set the lock going and went to walk over the the top gate, the small pound between the locks here looked like it was 3 ft lower than it should have been with mud getting more and more visible as the boat rose in the lock. Nothing for it other than to open the paddles on the next lock and let some water down if it was needed. Mick started to try to leave the lock but there just wasn't enough water to even get over the cil. So feeling slightly naughty I opened up the gates of the lock above and opened both the ground paddles. It took quite a few minutes for the mud to disapear and WD to be floating again. By the time we'd got into the lock and filled it, the pound above looked like it had dropped by at least 9 inches. Someone must have left a paddle up at some point or the short pound must leak.
It was starting to get dark and a large rain cloud was looming so we decided to pull in for the day. At least we'd got two locks further than at Christmas. As we moored up the heavens opened, with no waterproofs on I was glad we were stopping before the next five locks.
Stove lit (it has new fire bricks, the chimney has been re-cemented, so we shouldn't die of carbon monoxide poisoning this week), showers taken and spaghetti bolognaise being prepared by Mick the fireworks started all around us.
There have been constant explosions all around for the last 3 hours, some quite impressive home displays and some made up of 50p rockets. I suspect our display on Monday will be a bit like the later. Our aim is to try and get to somewhere with a good vantage point on the Macclesfield for Monday night, so that we can have a good free display whilst letting our few cheapskate ones off.

2.5 miles, 2 locks, an empty pound, 2 herons, 1 helicopter, spag bol, 1 soaking, 503927 rockets, 2765199 bangers, 3704 roman candles, 35 catherine wheels (not visible from the boat).