Manchester

It’s not our first visit.  We hired a boat for a fortnight in 2005 and completed the Cheshire Ring.  Dawn to dusk cruising at a frenetic place.  This time we’re taking it easy and smelling the flowers!

Something I’ve noticed when reading other blogs is that Wordpress blogs tend to load far slower than those using Blogger.  Am I on my own?  It’s one reason why I haven’t converted over.

The current mooring at Ducie Street Junction is very close to the Aldi.  We’ve already made one heavily laden return trip and will complete another before leaving.  There’s a M&S outlet which has enabled Jan to replace some of her more religious (holy) apparel.  I went to PC World and bought an external DVD reader/writer for the laptop.  The ultra cheap eBay external drive has proven to be a very bad buy as it only intermittently reads disks.

This morning I donned my frilly back and white French maids outfit to vacuum the floors.  The garden shed thinks this additional attention is most unfair and is now crying out for some TLC.  However my enthusiasm has now waned and it will have to wait until tomorrow.  Waiouru’s exterior needs a good wash but I’ve managed to convince myself this would be a wasted effort with so many locks left to do. 

A walk to the Arndale Shopping Centre revealed that Mick Jagger’s father and his mates had a gig going opposite the main entrance.  I think Michael Jackson was also in the band.  If you can’t recognize him then he’s the one wearing the gloves.  I didn’t know Elvis could play the drums!

Only one boat has passed us since we moored here on Friday afternoon.  As NB Tanya Louise went past going up the Rochdale the steerer called out he was a blog reader.  Jan got such a surprise she failed to ask his name.  Boat crew if you read this, please leave a comment with your name and we’ll amend the post.

Around lunch time a boat moored behind us and the crew went off to look for the water point at Ducie Street Junction.  Our Waterway Routes maps don’t show a tap and the other boat crew couldn’t find one!  I informed them our map showed the nearest tap to be two locks up the Rochdale Canal and in the basin to the right.   The following is a screen dump from the map

Actually I briefly mentioned this in the last post.  It looks like there is a shortcut between the Rochdale and Ashton Canals.  However Paul Balmer (who collects the data and creates the maps) told me those two arms are not joined.  Old Mill Street bisects them.  Additionally, they have slightly different water levels.

This next photo shows the Aston Canal arm looking back towards the Ashton Canal.

You will note the lift bridge on the exit from the arm to the Ashton Canal.  Looking in the opposite direction you can see Old Mill Street separates the two arms.

It’s also possible to see the difference in water levels in the above photo.  The other arm has quite a few boats moored in it and there appears to be shore power pods to some of the moorings.  It is this arm that has the boat facilities.

Towards the Rochdale Canal end of the basin looking back at the moored boats.

This next photo shows the remainder of the arm leading to the Rochdale Canal.

There were plenty of vacant moorings when I walked around the area.  However Paul informed me that it can sometimes get noisy in summer when the local teenagers decide to use it as their local swimming pool.  I guess I could fix that by dropping our self pump out hose over the side and telling a few of them we need to empty our toilet tank!